FOIA Request Reveals Internal Anti-Gun Org Emails

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Because the Mayor's office of New York thoughtfully coordinated with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the organization Judicial Watch was able to obtain 500+ pages of internal emails documenting their legislative strategies and budgets from just before Sandy Hook to several days after:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1978-Final-Response.pdf

Because many other anti-gun orgs were CC'ed, you can see their thoughts laid bare as they discuss amongst themselves what to do. Some key points I took from it:

1) They are totally clueless about the grassroots nature of the opposition. Their organization is very much top-down and they think RKBA is the same with the NRA giving marching orders to us

2) They admit outright that their goal is to eliminate all semiautomatic weapons from civilian ownership over time - first by banning certain weapons, then by expanding the bans, then by confiscation or attrition.

3) MAIG basically owns gun control now. If you are anti gun you either get onboard with MAIG or lose your funding.

4) There is a handy list of celebrities who offered support to MAIG - money, endorsements, facilities, etc.

It is a huge read; but one that is absolutely worth your time if you want to better understand what we are up against. I'm still reading it myself.

 

[horsemen61]

Thanks for that I need something to read

 

[torqem]

I can't stand to read such things. I get so mad that it's just plain not good for anybody.

 

[goon]

Thanks for the info.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Apparently, MAIG didn't bother to examine the content of emails sent using their "Contact your Congressman" feature. They just recorded the number of emails sent and used it for fundraising to prove they were making a difference to their marks.

 

[bainter1212]

Wow. Apparently they were already talking about using survivors of the Sandy Hook shootings in ads the day after the shooting.

 

[waterhouse]

Good read so far, thanks for posting.

 

[Deltaboy1984]

Know the Enemy! Good find.

 

[Trent]

Good grief. That man has deep pockets.

 

[TRX]

> 3) MAIG basically owns gun control now. If you are anti gun you either get
> onboard with MAIG or lose your funding.

That's the best news of the whole thing. Now we can concentrate on one main target.

 

[Bob M.]

Nice.....

Saved to disk......547 pages .PDF

 

[sig228]

Thanks for the link. Interesting reading. Show how rabid they became after Sandy Hook. Also interesting to see that MAIG supports gay rights organizations (not that there's anything wrong with that!) that appear to have nothing to do with gun control. (p. 137). Also, some of the redacted private info such as phone numbers were not so redacted in multiple places like on p.198 and p. 199. As far as the Hollywood stars who are anti-gun, these people are no surprises. Again, thanks for the find.

 

[OH_Spartan]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

You'll notice the lobbyists they hire do a decent job of soaking up a lot of that money. The budgets shown later indicate that the Mark Glaze writing those emails was making $17,500 a week.

 

[Midwest]

Thanks

 

[BHillman]

It's interesting around page 395 that for paying $25 to join, you get your choice of gifts...one being a "Rosewood handle knife." I guess knives aren't on their list yet.

Bruce

 

[Trent]

You'll notice the lobbyists they hire do a decent job of soaking up a lot of that money. The budgets shown later indicate that the Mark Glaze writing those emails was making $17,500 a week.

Seriously? I glanced over the statement but missed that. That's nearly a million a year.

I was more curious about whose names were omitted. There was a couple of points in the document where there was things such as "got off a call with [x,y,z, and redacted]."

I could only imagine one or more of those was "POTUS".

But we can't have that getting out in to the open.

Makes me wonder how much of the REAL interesting stuff made it in to the shredder before this was released.

They also seem to prefer to do most of their stuff over drinks.

Notice there's one spot where they focus all of their TV advertising "in areas affected by mass shootings", except DC, where the lion's share went. They were advertising to the politicians in DC more than they were the areas affected by mass shootings.

 

[ngnrd]

Thanks for posting. I'm into the survey at about page 220. It's enlightening to see where these types of polls get their 'overwhelming' responses; those questions are loaded.

 

[lykoris]

This sums it up from page 45

"We will be headed down this road for years to come and there will be plenty of opportunities for everyone"

Little by little, piece by piece

 

[vamo]

This sums it up from page 45

"We will be headed down this road for years to come and there will be plenty of opportunities for everyone"

Little by little, piece by piece

This is the precise reason we can't even let the smallest most ineffectual gun control measures pass without getting something in return.

 

[wrc]

This is a goldmine. Names, places, email addresses, phone numbers, inconsistent redactions...

All paid for by the citizens of NY. Probably because the key players in cityhall.nyc.gov didn't want to bother setting up a separate email account for their skullduggery on their iphones.

 

[Spats McGee]

I was more curious about whose names were omitted. There was a couple of points in the document where there was things such as "got off a call with [x,y,z, and redacted]."

Yes, and I have some questions as to the legality of redacting particular names. I understand the point in the cover letter about redacting contact information, but I have doubt that redacting the name is out is covered by the NY FOI statute. I might need to look into that.

 

[barnbwt]

Dubious legality of the Mayor's office coordinating with these guys aside, I'll bet they won't make this mistake again . Talk about a backfire!

This makes me feel far, far more secure in my freedoms than I was. It sounds like the whole deal really was a death-rattle of the gun control movement. There never was any widespread coordinated movement, just a bunch of opportunistic jerks looking to make a quick buck and a name for themselves before the issue settled back down. There is a conveniently singular target (MAIG, if you don't count any doubtless Executive branch meddling) as opposed to a Hydra, they have absolutely no idea who(m) they are up against (really, their strategy is actually focused on taking out "Big NRA" like they did the tobacco companies? Hilariously naïve.

Sounds like absolutely nothing is surprising here, other than their strategic incompetence and (apparent) systemic corruption. We always knew they were crass opportunists who sought the elimination of widespread gun ownership, and we knew they were on death's door right before the shooting. Now we know they haven't recovered one whit from that are being propped up solely by funny money from a handful of pols who stand to benefit, and run by flim-flammers promising their benefactors the moon in exchange for massive salaries.

Letting evidence of all this leak out into the open? Just wow.

TCB

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Well, they were inconsistent with their redacting. For example, the Repulican lobbyist who was eagerly volunteering to help them was Jamie Brown Hartmann, who used to work for Sen. Mack of CT. And at one point, they redact Michael Wolfowitz's name from the email header but not the signature of the email.

I think one important thing to take away is there are a small number of wealthy people who are willing to donate a LOT of money to push gun control; but only if they think they will get results. Note how Brady's fundraising has shrunk as they have been seen as more ineffective. Also note how MAIG was using things like "Emails sent through website" and other easily counted actions as metrics to show how they were different this time. Mark Glaze apparently did not realize that many pro-gun people were using the MAIG website to send their own messages of support because it was so convenient.

But there is no grassroots support... even with no membership fees and all you had to do was sign up online for an email list to be a supporter, MAIG struggled to reach 800k names while the NRA had 5 million paying members - and once again, I bet more than a few sign ups were from pro-RKBA people interested in keeping tabs on MAIG.

 

[barnbwt]

"MAIG struggled to reach 800k names while the NRA had 5 million paying members"

Wow, I guess we really are the big, bad wolf (yet somehow mere "fringe extremists" ). I think seeing the weak, rotten interior of their organization is very instructive in demonstrating just how much our government wants to infringe upon the 2nd amendment. MAIG is little more in reality than a useful cover for politicians to act under; hard to claim it's what the people want when there are no people behind it. And we're supposed to believe 95% of people were in favor of additional legislation.

I think data and info from this disclosure will be very helpful in combating the "it's what the people demand" tripe that gets trotted out all the time.

"But a majority says..."
"Yeah, well your organization has five people providing 90% of the money, and didn't actually do polling before reporting that number"

TCB