As the year winds down to a finish, two billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying groups have launched one more fund raising effort apiece, one attacking Donald Trump and the other complaining about efforts to overturn an extremist gun control initiative passed two years ago in Washington state.
This comes just a week before a special runoff election in Georgia will determine whether Republicans will retain control of the U.S. Senate or Democrats will take over on a 50-50 split in which Democrat Kamala Harris, acting as Senate president, will provide tie-breaking votes.
The runoff elections pit incumbent Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler against challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, respectively. Both Republican incumbents are pro-Second Amendment while Ossoff and Warnock are gun control supporters.
But there is more at work than just the Georgia elections.
The message from anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety declares, “For the past four years, Donald Trump has pushed the NRA’s extreme “guns everywhere” agenda, ignored our country’s gun violence crisis, and rejected common-sense gun safety legislation.
“But…thanks to you and our nearly 6 million other supporters, we not only defeated Donald Trump, but we elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the strongest gun safety presidential ticket in American history.”
The message ends in a plea for donations, which will be “triple matched” through the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the plea from the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility focuses on Initiative 1639, the measure passed in 2018 that classified every semiautomatic rifle as a “semiautomatic assault rifle,” and raised the age limit to 21 in order to purchase one.
The Alliance is supported by Seattle-area billionaires and their complaint might be considered alarming.
“Trump has spent the last four years packing federal courts with activist judges who are bent on expanding the Second Amendment,” the message states.
“And he secured his most consequential victory with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court,” the Alliance notes. “The gun lobby and its supporters know that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so they’re doubling down on efforts to challenge any and every gun safety measure: The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation has filed half a dozen new lawsuits in just the past few weeks.”
While insisting the laws they have supported and pushed through are constitutional, this group is still raising money to fight the legal actions.
Recently, SAF and the National Rifle Association filed an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seeking a reversal and remand of the lawsuit challenging I-1639.
“We’re asking the Ninth Circuit to reverse a ruling by the lower federal district court, and remand this case back for further action,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens should never be subject to a popular vote, and we are hopeful the appeals court agrees.”
