PA Bill Number: HB335

Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.

Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...

Last Action: Removed from table

Last Action Date: May 1, 2024

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CCRKBA launches new effort to counter Bloomberg :: 05/20/2015

Today’s announcement by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms that it has launched a media campaign to counter an “adjacent news operation” by Everytown for Gun Safety – the big-money lobbying group financed by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg – should come as no surprise.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb has never been shy about criticizing anti-gunners, and even though a new 30-second spot doesn’t mention the former New York mayor by name, it smacks hard at policies he supports. Actually, the spot shows an image of two other anti-gunners, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Today’s launch comes just ten days after Capital reported that Bloomberg’s Everytown news operation was firing up. Even the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action covered the story, asserting that this was all “in furtherance of his megalomaniacal gun control agenda.”

It is no secret that Bloomberg has been dabbling increasingly in state-level politics. Last year, his money helped tilt the Oregon Legislature farther to the left, thus assuring adoption of SB 941 last month in Salem. That’s the so-called “universal background check” measure that sheriffs have already said they would not enforce. Gottlieb and others have expressed alarm at the amount of money Bloomberg seems willing to spend in order to have his way.

Bloomberg’s Everytown group was launched last year with $50 million, and it has already been called “Astroturf” – a reference suggesting that it is phony grassroots – by many people. Gottlieb picked up on that in today’s announcement.

“While Bloomberg is spending millions of dollars to create Astroturf,” he said, “our mission is to cultivate honest grassroots activism.”

CCRKBA has aired a 30-second spot on some key cable networks, and the full program will have spots appearing on the following networks: FOX Business, SPIKE, Velocity, American Heroes, History and H2, TNT, Do It Yourself, AMC, Discovery and Investigation Discovery, the Outdoor Channel, the Sportsman Channel, CMT, Trinity Broadcast Network, Fox News, The Blaze and the Weather Channel.

“This is one of our most ambitious undertakings,” Gottlieb said. “We’re challenging what might best be described as a public disinformation effort backed by a multi-billionaire who is becoming increasingly involved in state level politics. He may spend millions of dollars, but we’re reaching out to millions of law-abiding citizens.”

The new campaign is essentially a membership drive, but in the wake of the recent attack in Garland, Texas it strikes some new chords.

“Our country is experiencing increasing turmoil and the threat of so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorism,” Gottlieb noted.. “Now is not the time to be eroding the most basic tenet of our liberty, which is the one right that protects all of our other rights. The system may be broken, but surrendering our rights is not the way to fix it.

“Wealthy demagogues think they can buy the power to tell everyone else how to live,” he asserted. “The Bill of Rights is not up for grabs, especially not one piece at a time. Today these elitists are after the Second Amendment, but what about tomorrow? The First Amendment right of free speech? Maybe the Fourth Amendment right of privacy. Or how about the Fifth Amendment right of due process?

“This battle isn’t about guns,” according to Gottlieb. “This is about freedom, and that’s not for sale at any price.”

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