Anti-gunny money
A four-part series from Nemerov one, two, three, and four.
And Matt emails:
I was reading your post today about the press and MAIG. I posted a comment reminding people about the Joyce connection and I decided to check and see if Joyce ever updated their website with the last round of grants. They have… and from their history, some of the new grants are troubling (I copied a few below).
The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence
Washington, DC
Amount: $85,274.00
Length: 6
To support its work at the state and federal levels to close secondary gun markets and to work with the District of Columbia on a constitutionally permissible gun law following the Heller decision.
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United Against Illegal Guns Support Fund
New York, NY
Amount: $500,000.00
Length: 12
To support the work of Mayors Against Illegal Guns to educate the public and policy makers about the problems of illegal guns and gun trafficking, and for the City Coordinators program of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition.
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Legal Community Against Violence
San Francisco, CA
Amount: $325,000.00
Length: 12
To support its Illinois Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence research on changing attitudes toward gun laws post-Heller.
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Research to change the opinions of Heller. Half a million to MIAG, just this year. Helping DC write “constitutional” gun laws.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:54 am
Markie Marxist sez: “Hey! That’s a lot of cash! I’m going to have to try to get some. Let’s see, I could call my group “The Legal and Educational Community United Against Gun Violence and Illegal Guns to Stop Gun Violence and Illegal Guns Support Fund”. That should cover all the bases. My salary will be $100k, so if I can get a grant for $85k, I get to keep all the money for myself. I wonder if they have an online application?”
September 18th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Matt mentioned:
“Research to change the opinions of Heller.”
Matt, that goes pretty deep. I have not done the analyses, but if you were to quantify the sources cited by the DC team and their amici in Heller, I think you would find that the vast majority of them source back to the Joyce Foundation. Much of that whole Saul Cornell group/initiative at Ohio State was set up by Joyce dollars. I think that the logic behind Joyce funding is more insidious than just supporting the regular gun control organizations … I think that they attempted the wholesale purchase of academic and scholarly publications that would have supported the sophisticated collective rights interpretation … which given one more vote would have won they day and arguably rendered the second amendment meaningless based on modern juriceprudence.
Someone really needs to do a quantitative study on this issue.
My hypothesis is that Joyce funded faux academic research for the purpose of rendering the second amendment meaningless.
Falsify it.
September 18th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I realize that’s a pretty strong “charge.”
Consider it a hypothesis open to falsification.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Carl, that is just the tip of the iceburg. Joyce will fund a school to produce a “study” and then have another professor from another school they also fund proclaim how valid and spectacular the results are. Then a group Joyce funds (like the VPC) will produce press releases, amici and such to call for legal decisions or new laws based on the studies.
Joyce also did not “attempt” to buy law reviews and such, they succeeded in buying them and paid for copies to be sent to judges.
Confederate Yankee did a writeup on anti-Heller amici and their Joyce Foundation connections. http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/JoyceCornellHeller.pdf
September 19th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Is there any way to get a foundation de-funded? Conspiracy against constitutional rights or something? Some way to tie them up in massive litigation and suck their funding that way?
September 19th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
“United Against Illegal Guns Support Fund” looks like a clever way to make campaign contributions to favored mayors, using the group as a filter or buffer.