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There was a recent ballot measure in Montana designed to prevent individual cities from establishing their own gun law and regulations[1]. In support of this b

There was a recent ballot measure in Montana designed to prevent individual cities from establishing their own gun law and regulations[1]. In support of this ballot measure, the NRA Big Sky Self-Defense Committee spent $52,632.37. In opposition, the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund spent $208,357.84, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility spent 15,400.00, I was personally very surprised because I had always been lead by the media to understand that the financials played out in the opposite manner, with huge funding coming from the big bad out of state NRA, and small local governments getting trampled. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Montana_LR-130,_Limit_Local_Government_Authority_to_Regulate_Firearms_Measure_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/Montana_LR-130,_Limit_Local_Governme...

postpawl 6y ago
Open secrets still shows quite a bit more spending on gun rights overall: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns Is that really even a surprise? Gun rights has an entire industry behind it.
- COGlory 6y ago
  Open secrets is an obviously biased source that believes there should be more gun control. Their compiled numbers could easily exclude anti-gun spending, and I'm inclined to believe their do. For instance, they say that in 2020, there was $1,540,000 spent on gun control[1]. The Montana ballot initiative referenced above had $1,629,596.12 spent in opposition to in in 2020 alone[2]. [1] Committees in opposition to LR-130 https://ballotpedia.org/Montana_LR-130,_Limit_Local_Government_Authority_to_Regulate_Firearms_Measure_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/Montana_LR-130,_Limit_Local_Governme... [2]TABLE: Gun rights vs. gun control lobbying, 1998-2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns
  - woodruffw 6y ago
    > Open secrets is an obviously biased source that believes there should be more gun control. Do you have a source for this claim? They're listed as a nonpartisan organization online[1], and it seems as though their founders were a pair of Democratic and Republican senators. Their current lead project appears to be tracing the Biden administration's money, which doesn't feel like towing the line to me. Edit: I found this conservative source[2], which refers to them as performing "left-wing" campaign finance advocacy. I think they're referring to the Citizens United decision, which has been a rallying point for every government watchdog that I know of. It occurs to me that (1) you could label just about anything as "left-wing" in this manner, and (2) campaign finance reform isn't something that most self-identified leftists would consider "left-wing" (being firmly in the "make government more transparent" category of political activity). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Responsive_Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Responsive_Politics [2]: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-responsive-politics/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-respons...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Anon1096 6y ago
      You can just read the page linked in the GP about gun spending. It's exceedingly obvious that they have a strong viewpoint on the issue.
      - woodruffw 6y ago
        "They have a strong viewpoint" is a not the same thing as "obviously biased." Conflating them is a rhetorical sleight of hand. When I go to that page, I get a few grafs on recent mass shootings (which, barring conspiracy theories, everybody is presumably on board with having happened). Mentioning those at all indicates that they have a viewpoint, but I don't see anything that indicates that it biases their transparency work. There's nothing to justify the insinuation.
        COGlory 6y ago
        The examples gave about their data being incomplete, combined with the text on their page, paints a strong picture of bias.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    I was curious about the discrepancy, and Open Secrets doesn't really report its methodology well here. I did some digging and found that it's the amount of money that is spent on lobbying federal officials, not a number inclusive of all kinds of political expenditures. It does seem a bit motivated to choose federal lobbying as the initial representation of spending around the gun issue, when it's clearly dwarfed by initiative campaign expenditures, donations to individual candidates, and electoral campaign expenditures.
    - COGlory 6y ago
      Thank you for investigating that. I can't edit my above comment anymore or I'd include that. Although I think the broader point, that anyone can make the spending numbers look a certain way, is still valid.
- sky_rw 6y ago
  The NRA is not the gun rights organization that the industry backs. That would be the NSSF.
johnasmith 6y ago
Is this ballot measure representative? This ballot initiative was two months before the NRA filed for Chapter 11, so I'd expect their spending was constrained.
- wl 6y ago
  The NRA's financial disclosures and their public statements indicate they are not experiencing financial difficulties. Their stated purpose in filing bankruptcy is to dissolve the New York corporation and reincorporate in Texas to escape an ideologically hostile regulatory environment. It sounds insane to use bankruptcy in this way. Every bankruptcy expert I've read looking at this thinks the approach is nuts and will fail.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > Their stated purpose in filing bankruptcy is to dissolve the New York corporation and reincorporate in Texas to escape an ideologically hostile regulatory environment. It sounds insane to use bankruptcy in this way. By "hostile regulatory environment" it is meant that they allegedly committed fraud against their donors and the (Democratic) attorney general is going after them for the breaking law: * https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899712823/new-york-attorney-general-moves-to-dissolve-the-nra-after-fraud-investigation https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899712823/new-york-attorney-g... Some donors also think this: * https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/nra-donor-bankruptcy-dave-dellaquila-wayne-lapierre https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/nra-donor-ba... And the NRA has admitted that such things happened in certain circumstances: * https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/527615-nra-admits-some-executives-used-nonprofit-money-for https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/... With NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre paying back $300K: * https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nra-chief-lapierre-illicit-gains-report-1096433/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nra-chie... See also the IRS investing LaPierre for possible criminal tax fraud related to his personal finances: * https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-investigating-nras-wayne-lapierre-for-possible-tax-fraud-11601923467 https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-investigating-nras-wayne-la...
flyingfences 6y ago
The numbers were similar in the background check referendum [0] in Maine a few years ago -- the NRA et. al. were outspent five-to-one by the coalitions pushing the measure (and the referendum still failed). [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Background_Checks_for_Gun_Sales,_Question_3_(2016) https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Background_Checks_for_Gun_Sale...
pavlov 6y ago
It seems to me that this is an example of the article’s point: NRA had money but it didn’t reach places like Montana because NRA executives were spending lavishly on things other than its core mission.
ardy42 6y ago
> In opposition, the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund spent $208,357.84 IIRC, Everytown for Gun Safety is basically a front group for Michael Bloomberg. That's the guy who also spent nearly a billion dollars on his vanity presidential campaign: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/bloomberg-campaign-900-million.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/bloomberg-cam.... Your example might be more of an example of the corrosive effect of politically active billionaires, who have the ability to outspend actual citizens' groups. IIRC, the billionaire Koch bothers were able to similarly wield outsized influence by spending heavily in down-ballot state races.
- Craighead 6y ago
  then bowed out and used the information he collected in his campaign to undermine the authoritarian coup attempt on America.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Times change: 2nd graders killed in Newtown, country music fans laid waste in Las Vegas, etc., etc. You look, for example, at ballot measures in Washington state that are about tougher gun laws and they pass by the majority of voters. Restricting access to guns is popular in this country. I am not surprised that the NRA is finding itself increasingly diminished.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
  Not really. Texas is about to become a 2A sanctuary, Utah, Iowa, Texas, Tennessee, Florida are close to passing constitutional carry. Kansas wants to expand concealed carry to 18-20 year olds. Gun sales are at record highs, etc etc.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    The numbers suggest that a minority of gun owners are buying more and more guns, not that we are seeing more and more gun owners as a percentage — just gun hoarding.
    - anewaccount2021 6y ago
      No. Five million gun purchase background checks were done last year for new gun owners. https://www.nssf.org/first-time-gun-buyers-grow-to-nearly-5-million-in-2020/ https://www.nssf.org/first-time-gun-buyers-grow-to-nearly-5-... At no time in history have more Americans owned guns per-capita
    - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
      Not according to industry surveys such as data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) which reported that 40% of new guns sold in 2020 went to first time buyers, a total of 5 million new gun owners. There's also reason to believe that in an increasingly anti-gun climate, gun owners are lying on traditional gun ownership surveys. On these studies, there's always a significant portion of respondents who refuse to answer the question. I think these are silent gun owners. When democrats like Beto are calling for gun confiscation, would you want to make yourself known as a gun owner?
Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
Michael Bloomberg, who ran (and lost) the most expensive campaign for candidacy in history is a major anti-gun donor.

postpawl 6y ago

Open secrets still shows quite a bit more spending on gun rights overall: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns Is that really even a surprise? Gun rights has an entire industry behind it.

COGlory 6y ago
Open secrets is an obviously biased source that believes there should be more gun control. Their compiled numbers could easily exclude anti-gun spending, and I'm inclined to believe their do. For instance, they say that in 2020, there was $1,540,000 spent on gun control[1]. The Montana ballot initiative referenced above had $1,629,596.12 spent in opposition to in in 2020 alone[2]. [1] Committees in opposition to LR-130 https://ballotpedia.org/Montana_LR-130,_Limit_Local_Government_Authority_to_Regulate_Firearms_Measure_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/Montana_LR-130,_Limit_Local_Governme... [2]TABLE: Gun rights vs. gun control lobbying, 1998-2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns
- woodruffw 6y ago
  > Open secrets is an obviously biased source that believes there should be more gun control. Do you have a source for this claim? They're listed as a nonpartisan organization online[1], and it seems as though their founders were a pair of Democratic and Republican senators. Their current lead project appears to be tracing the Biden administration's money, which doesn't feel like towing the line to me. Edit: I found this conservative source[2], which refers to them as performing "left-wing" campaign finance advocacy. I think they're referring to the Citizens United decision, which has been a rallying point for every government watchdog that I know of. It occurs to me that (1) you could label just about anything as "left-wing" in this manner, and (2) campaign finance reform isn't something that most self-identified leftists would consider "left-wing" (being firmly in the "make government more transparent" category of political activity). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Responsive_Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Responsive_Politics [2]: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-responsive-politics/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-respons...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Anon1096 6y ago
    You can just read the page linked in the GP about gun spending. It's exceedingly obvious that they have a strong viewpoint on the issue.
    - woodruffw 6y ago
      "They have a strong viewpoint" is a not the same thing as "obviously biased." Conflating them is a rhetorical sleight of hand. When I go to that page, I get a few grafs on recent mass shootings (which, barring conspiracy theories, everybody is presumably on board with having happened). Mentioning those at all indicates that they have a viewpoint, but I don't see anything that indicates that it biases their transparency work. There's nothing to justify the insinuation.
      - COGlory 6y ago
        The examples gave about their data being incomplete, combined with the text on their page, paints a strong picture of bias.
- scarmig 6y ago
  I was curious about the discrepancy, and Open Secrets doesn't really report its methodology well here. I did some digging and found that it's the amount of money that is spent on lobbying federal officials, not a number inclusive of all kinds of political expenditures. It does seem a bit motivated to choose federal lobbying as the initial representation of spending around the gun issue, when it's clearly dwarfed by initiative campaign expenditures, donations to individual candidates, and electoral campaign expenditures.
  - COGlory 6y ago
    Thank you for investigating that. I can't edit my above comment anymore or I'd include that. Although I think the broader point, that anyone can make the spending numbers look a certain way, is still valid.
sky_rw 6y ago
The NRA is not the gun rights organization that the industry backs. That would be the NSSF.

johnasmith 6y ago

Is this ballot measure representative? This ballot initiative was two months before the NRA filed for Chapter 11, so I'd expect their spending was constrained.

wl 6y ago
The NRA's financial disclosures and their public statements indicate they are not experiencing financial difficulties. Their stated purpose in filing bankruptcy is to dissolve the New York corporation and reincorporate in Texas to escape an ideologically hostile regulatory environment. It sounds insane to use bankruptcy in this way. Every bankruptcy expert I've read looking at this thinks the approach is nuts and will fail.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Their stated purpose in filing bankruptcy is to dissolve the New York corporation and reincorporate in Texas to escape an ideologically hostile regulatory environment. It sounds insane to use bankruptcy in this way. By "hostile regulatory environment" it is meant that they allegedly committed fraud against their donors and the (Democratic) attorney general is going after them for the breaking law: * https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899712823/new-york-attorney-general-moves-to-dissolve-the-nra-after-fraud-investigation https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/899712823/new-york-attorney-g... Some donors also think this: * https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/nra-donor-bankruptcy-dave-dellaquila-wayne-lapierre https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/16/nra-donor-ba... And the NRA has admitted that such things happened in certain circumstances: * https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/527615-nra-admits-some-executives-used-nonprofit-money-for https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/business-a-lobbying/... With NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre paying back $300K: * https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nra-chief-lapierre-illicit-gains-report-1096433/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/nra-chie... See also the IRS investing LaPierre for possible criminal tax fraud related to his personal finances: * https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-investigating-nras-wayne-lapierre-for-possible-tax-fraud-11601923467 https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-investigating-nras-wayne-la...

flyingfences 6y ago

The numbers were similar in the background check referendum [0] in Maine a few years ago -- the NRA et. al. were outspent five-to-one by the coalitions pushing the measure (and the referendum still failed). [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Background_Checks_for_Gun_Sales,_Question_3_(2016) https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Background_Checks_for_Gun_Sale...

pavlov 6y ago

It seems to me that this is an example of the article’s point: NRA had money but it didn’t reach places like Montana because NRA executives were spending lavishly on things other than its core mission.

ardy42 6y ago

> In opposition, the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund spent $208,357.84 IIRC, Everytown for Gun Safety is basically a front group for Michael Bloomberg. That's the guy who also spent nearly a billion dollars on his vanity presidential campaign: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/bloomberg-campaign-900-million.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/bloomberg-cam.... Your example might be more of an example of the corrosive effect of politically active billionaires, who have the ability to outspend actual citizens' groups. IIRC, the billionaire Koch bothers were able to similarly wield outsized influence by spending heavily in down-ballot state races.

Craighead 6y ago
then bowed out and used the information he collected in his campaign to undermine the authoritarian coup attempt on America.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

Times change: 2nd graders killed in Newtown, country music fans laid waste in Las Vegas, etc., etc. You look, for example, at ballot measures in Washington state that are about tougher gun laws and they pass by the majority of voters. Restricting access to guns is popular in this country. I am not surprised that the NRA is finding itself increasingly diminished.

Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
Not really. Texas is about to become a 2A sanctuary, Utah, Iowa, Texas, Tennessee, Florida are close to passing constitutional carry. Kansas wants to expand concealed carry to 18-20 year olds. Gun sales are at record highs, etc etc.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  The numbers suggest that a minority of gun owners are buying more and more guns, not that we are seeing more and more gun owners as a percentage — just gun hoarding.
  - anewaccount2021 6y ago
    No. Five million gun purchase background checks were done last year for new gun owners. https://www.nssf.org/first-time-gun-buyers-grow-to-nearly-5-million-in-2020/ https://www.nssf.org/first-time-gun-buyers-grow-to-nearly-5-... At no time in history have more Americans owned guns per-capita
  - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
    Not according to industry surveys such as data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) which reported that 40% of new guns sold in 2020 went to first time buyers, a total of 5 million new gun owners. There's also reason to believe that in an increasingly anti-gun climate, gun owners are lying on traditional gun ownership surveys. On these studies, there's always a significant portion of respondents who refuse to answer the question. I think these are silent gun owners. When democrats like Beto are calling for gun confiscation, would you want to make yourself known as a gun owner?

Acrobatic_Road 6y ago

Michael Bloomberg, who ran (and lost) the most expensive campaign for candidacy in history is a major anti-gun donor.