Billionaire-funded 5th Edition of RAND’s Gun Policy Report as Anti-gun as First Four

By Lee Williams SAF Investigative Journalism Project Special to Liberty Park Press Once anti-gun billionaires Laura and John Arnold sent another check to the RAND Corporation for its annual report,  “The Science of Gun Policy,” there was little doubt about what RAND researchers would find, since the Arnolds pay all the bills.

The annual report is part of a larger anti-gun initiative, which RAND has labeled “Guns in America.” Before 2018, RAND funded the entire initiative themselves, through “unrestricted gifts from RAND supporters and income from operations.” After 2018, however, the Arnolds pay for all of it through their left-wing philanthropy foundation called Arnold Ventures. And for the fifth year in a row, the billionaire couple certainly got what they paid for. Six RAND researchers needed more than 440 pages to claim that guns are bad, and that more anti-gun laws are needed. Here are their major findings:

• The government should be able to order you to lock up your guns.
• Stand-your-ground laws are dangerous.
• The country needs to raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm.
• Waiting periods reduce homicides and suicides.
• Background checks for even private sales reduce homicides.
• Laws barring gun rights to those subject to a domestic violence restraining order decrease homicides.

Here are their recommendations:

• All states should order you to lock up your guns.
• All states should repeal stand-your-ground laws.
• All states should ban concealed carry and permitless carry.
• All states should raise the minimum age to purchase firearms and ammunition.
• All states should ban gun ownership by anyone subject to a restraining order.
• All states should require background checks, even for private sales.

RAND states that its report is cited by mainstream media 75-100 times a year. They did offer some good news. This is the last edition of the report, which RAND says is still needed. “In the United States, gun policies of every kind are being reconsidered and relitigated in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which fundamentally altered the standards used to assess the constitutionality of firearm laws,” RAND states. Most gun owners should strongly disagree with this comment, regardless of the numbers of PhDs held by its authors. Bruen, did not fundamentally alter the standard used to assess the constitutionality of gun laws. Bruen simply returned it to normal, away from all of the confusing legal mess the anti-gunners had created and used for decades. The Arnolds On August 5, 2024, we published a special report about the Arnolds and their anti-gun activities titled “Billionaire anti-gun philanthropists backing biased anti-gun research.” The story revealed how the Arnolds are a major part—the first step—of producing anti-gun information, which is then circulated across the country. “An investigation by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project reveals how a former Enron trader and his wife are quietly paying millions of dollars every year to colleges, universities, think tanks and other groups for biased anti-gun research, which is then cited as gospel by the corporate media and used as propaganda by anyone who wants to infringe upon law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” the story states. Most disturbing was the vast amount of money the couple paid for anti-gun “research,” which was conducted by RAND and other groups. According to their nonprofit’s 2022 IRS form 990, the couple paid RAND at total of $2.8 million, of which $1.7 million was for anti-gun research. That same year, the couple paid more than $1.8 million for anti-gun research from other groups. The couple remains very active in the anti-gun community. Recently, they awarded more than one-half million dollars for a study in Chicago, New York City, Texas and Washington D.C., which evaluates “the impact of prosecutor-led diversion programs for non-violent gun offenses.” Takeaways As we said just a year ago, the Arnolds have created a pipeline of sorts. Cash goes in one end and anti-gun propaganda emerges from the other, and given its storied 80-year history, it’s sad that RAND is playing along. What their researchers presented was overwritten nonsense, of course, and given that it took them more than 440 pages, it may be the most overwritten anti-gun document ever produced. In fact, I’ve seen basically the same false claims on one-page brochures from very poorly funded anti-gun groups. When the first story ran, Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, pointed out that we don’t have anything as elaborate as this anti-gun pipeline process, adding “We don’t need it. We simply rely upon the truth.” That, friends, remains very true. The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project wouldn’t be po