Yes, George Soros
is a Gun Grabber
Friday, November 16, 2018
In 2015, billionaire gun control financier and potential 2020 presidential
candidate Michael Bloomberg financed the creation
of the anti-gun propaganda outlet The Trace. Ever grateful for their wealthy
benefactor’s unfettered
largesse, the Bloomberg advocacy group now views less-profligate anti-gun
tycoons as irrelevant to gun control lobby’s efforts.
In a piece titled, “George Soros Is Not the Gun Grabber
the NRA Says He Is,” The Trace sets out to rehabilitate the anti-gun image of
the Hungarian-born billionaire and his political apparatus, Open Society
Foundations.
According to Bloomberg’s press agents, Soros is a small
fry in the gun control debate and “has not sunk much into gun control causes in
nearly 20 years.” The flacks acknowledge, but brush aside, the fact that “over
the past 20 years, Open Society has spent $3 million total on efforts to reduce
gun violence.” Moreover, the advocates discount more recent Open Society
contributions to the gun control effort following the shootings in Newtown,
Conn. and Parkland, Fla.
In 2017, Soros announced his plans to gift $18 billion to
Open Society Foundations. At the time NRA-ILA explained why that gift should
trouble gun owners, detailing Soros’s lengthy record on gun control.
For more on Soros’s record of support for gun control
visit:
In glossing over Soros’s history of support for gun
control, The Trace neglected to mention that Open Society Foundations has
advocated for bans on commonly-owned semiautomatic firearms, gun rationing, and
the “licensing of firearm owners and registration of guns.” The gun control
group also failed to note that Open Society funded anti-gun organizations like
the Million Mom March, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, New Yorkers
Against Gun Violence, and Women Against Gun Violence. There was also no mention
of Open Society’s support for frivolous lawsuits
aimed at bankrupting the firearms industry.
The main thrust of The Trace item is that while Soros
engaged in some gun control efforts 20 years ago, his recent and ongoing
efforts aren’t worthy of NRA’s criticism.
As NRA-ILA’s 2017 piece explained, some of Open Society
Foundations’ more recent actions should trouble gun owners:
Open Society has worked closely with the Joyce
Foundation and given grant money to their projects.
The Joyce Foundation funds a host of anti-gun initiatives and is a chief
financier of the handgun prohibitionist organization the Violence Policy
Center. In 2013 Open Society granted $150,000 to
the Joyce Foundation’s Fund for a Safer Future. According to the initiative’s materials,
their goals include “background checks on all gun sales; [and] bans on assault
weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.”
A 2016 interview with one of Open Society’s grantees,
Marlon Peterson, provides an idea of Open Society’s current position on the
Second Amendment. Peterson said that NRA and the “firearms industrial complex”
had, “bastardized the Second Amendment for capital gain at the expense of
thousands of American lives every year.” The grantee went on to add, “This
nation needs to be bold enough to reconsider our relationship to the Second
Amendment.”
Concerning Open Society’s global efforts, the group
has a close relationship with international gun control activist Rebecca Peters. An
Australian, Peters came to international prominence in 1996 as a campaigner for
her country’s gun ban and confiscation regime. Peters went on to be the program
director for the Funder’s Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention, which
received funding from Open Society, and then direct the International Action
Network on Small Arms. IANSA is a gun control umbrella organization whose
members include U.S. gun control groups such as the Brady Campaign and States
United to Prevent Gun Violence along with foreign groups like Gun Control Australia.
Beyond Peters, Director of the Control Arms
Secretariat Anna Macdonald
holds an Open Society fellowship. Control Arms was a leading backer of the United Nations Arms Trade
Treaty. Further, Open Society Director of Learning and Grant Making Natalie Jaynes is
an alumnus of both the Small Arms Survey and Gun Free South Africa.
With at least $50 Million pledged to for
Everytown for Gun Safety, $1.1 billion to Johns Hopkins
University (which included cash for the anti-gun Bloomberg School of
Public Health), and wild spending on political campaigns (which included $100 million for Democrats
during the 2018 election cycle for the express purpose of
enacting gun control), Michael Bloomberg is the reigning king of the anti-gun
oligarchs. However, that does not mean gun owners should ignore the other
wealthy elites that attack their rights.
Soros has built the anti-gun Open Society Foundations
into one of the largest
philanthropic organizations and the New York Times reported that the
billionaire’s gift to the group was “one of the largest transfers of wealth
ever made by a private donor to a single foundation.” With an ever-growing
anti-gun record, gun rights supporters should keep a careful eye on Soros and
his burgeoning advocacy network; NRA-ILA certainly will.
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