Billionaire Backing Biased Anti-Gun Research

“On this world, you get what you pay for,” mentioned Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle, his fourth novel. And when billionaire philanthropists are concerned, Mr. Vonnegut is greater than proper. These days, billionaires get precisely what they pay for. 

An investigation by the Second Modification Basis’s Investigative Journalism Undertaking reveals how a former Enron dealer and his spouse are quietly paying tens of millions of {dollars} yearly to high schools, universities, assume tanks and different teams for biased anti-gun analysis, which is then cited as gospel by the company media and used as propaganda by anybody who needs to infringe upon law-abiding People’ Second Modification rights. 

Billionaires Laura and John Arnold – by Arnold Ventures, a Houston-based for-profit company the couple based to “proactively obtain social change” and their nonprofit, the Laura and John Arnold Basis – are quietly bankrolling analysis that promotes and helps their radical anti-gun views. Their Basis has greater than $3.5 billion in property. 

Regardless of their predilection to work in secret, the couple’s actions haven’t gone unnoticed.  

“Arnold Ventures is the gun management backer most People have by no means heard of. They quietly work behind the scenes, in contrast to Michael Bloomberg. Nonetheless, their affect on making an attempt to form gun management coverage rivals that of the largest backers of antigun efforts. They repeatedly donate cash to assume tanks and academia to propel biased analysis into the coverage area. Arnold Enterprise’s philanthropic outreach sounds well-intentioned, however they’re serving up snake oil after they peddle firearms as a illness,” Mark Oliva, public affairs director for the Nationwide Capturing Sports activities Basis, mentioned final week. 

The Arnolds’ huge monetary clout creates an unholy alliance between grantor and grantee. Their paid researchers publish findings that help the couple’s views, or they threat the money spigot being turned off and the lack of tens of millions of {dollars} to their group. 

On the subject of their donations, it’s clear who determines the place the cash goes. 

“Laura and John established the Laura and John Arnold Basis in 2010. They imagine philanthropy ought to be transformational and may search by innovation to resolve persistent issues in society. As co-founders, Laura and John actively have interaction within the group’s general course and every day execution,” the group’s web site states. 

John Arnold began as a dealer for Enron, in response to Affect Watch. He give up earlier than the corporate imploded and was by no means accused of wrongdoing. Along with gun management, the couple helps well being care reform, prison justice reform, jail reform and a number of other nonprofit media teams. 

The RAND Company is a serious recipient of the Arnolds’ funding. RAND now maintains a gun-policy web page. A lot of their analysis is sponsored by the Arnolds. 

In accordance with the Laura and John Arnold Basis’s 2022 IRS type 990, the couple paid RAND at whole of $2.8 million, of which $1.7 million was for anti-gun analysis, together with: 

$1,261,269 “to conduct analysis on find out how to cut back gun violence.” 
$99,000 “to help the primary nationwide convention on gun violence prevention analysis.”
$89,000 “to help a convening referring to the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s resolution within the Bruen case.” 
$283,546 “to offer goal details about firearm violence and the way state legal guidelines cut back or exacerbate this violence.” 

That very same yr, the couple paid greater than $1.8 million for anti-gun analysis from different teams, together with: 

$28,040 to the Nationwide Opinion Analysis Middle “to help the NORC professional panel on lowering gun violence and bettering information infrastructure.” 
$219,122 to the College of California at Berkeley “to judge the advance peace gun violence discount program.” 
$1,065,933 to Princeton College “to develop a analysis infrastructure that helps cities higher perceive and reply to waves of gun violence.” 
$475,093 to the College of Maryland “to help the middle for examine and observe of violence discount.” 

In whole, the Basis donated greater than $185 million, in response to their 2022 IRS Type 990.

Arnold Ventures public relations director, Angela Landers, declined to be interviewed for this story, prepare an interview with the Arnolds or talk about the gun-control analysis they funded. As an alternative, Landers selected to ship a written assertion, which is unedited and reprinted in its entirety:  

“Philanthropy can play a singular function in supporting analysis concerning the impression of many public insurance policies, together with these associated to gun violence. On this occasion, Arnold Ventures partnered with RAND Corp., a nonpartisan and extensively revered analysis establishment, to conduct scientific analysis that provides the general public and policymakers a factual foundation for growing honest and efficient gun insurance policies within the curiosity of public security. Sound analysis is a vital a part of constructing evidence-based options,” Landers mentioned in her assertion. 

RAND’s Response 

Whereas there have been rare gun-related tasks over time, the RAND Company as a complete didn’t analysis “gun violence” till 2016, when there was a mass-shooting close to their California workplace, in response to Andrew R. Morral, PhD, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND and the Greenwald Household Chair in Gun Coverage.

“A variety of our employees had been rattled by it, as had been RAND trustees and pals of RAND,” Morral informed the Second Modification Basis final week. “They contacted our president and requested what we had been going to do about it.” 

RAND put aside some inside funds as a result of the work was not but sponsored and investigated, Morral defined. In 2018, they launched their first tranche of analysis.  

“Arnold Ventures picked it up and has funded us since then,” he mentioned. 

Right now, Arnold Ventures is RAND’s largest sponsor of gun-control analysis. Along with the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis, the 2 teams pay RAND greater than $1.5 million yearly, Morral mentioned. Federal grants from the Nationwide Institute of Well being and the Nationwide Institute of Justice present further “gun-violence” analysis funding. 

None of RAND’s estimated 1,900 workers are researching gun-control full time, Morral mentioned. Though he estimated between six to eight staffers are finding out gun-control subjects “as a part of their analysis portfolios.” 

Morral denied that Arnold Ventures or every other donor interfered with their analysis.

“We’re very cautious to not permit that to occur,” he mentioned. “We haven’t skilled any strain and we now have not been requested to share our findings with Arnold Ventures or every other sponsor. We aren’t held accountable for producing leads to a sure course. Our donors, usually, are keen on us being impartial and goal, which is a part of the rationale they got here to RAND.”

Nonetheless, Morral acknowledged that their sponsors can use their analysis nonetheless they see match.

“We notice it’s used for advocacy, in fact. We’re producing scientific outcomes. We will’t management how they’re used. Folks will use that in a wide range of methods. Our outcomes are utilized by each advocates for extra restrictive gun legal guidelines in addition to advocates for much less restrictive gun legal guidelines.” 

Morral mentioned RAND takes no place on the fitting to maintain and bear arms. “We don’t have coverage positions on that or on gun legal guidelines or anything,” he mentioned. “We don’t advocate. We don’t do any advocacy.” 

Nonetheless, it’s RAND’s opinion and Morral’s that “gun-violence” constitutes a public well being disaster.

“I definitely assume there’s a disaster by way of the variety of individuals dying and being injured every year,” he mentioned. “The numbers are excessive sufficient to name {that a} disaster.” 

RAND, Morral mentioned, stands by the validity of their gun-violence analysis, “topic to the restrictions reported in our studies. All analysis has limitations, and we attempt to be upfront about that,” he mentioned. 

RAND’s place on two frequent gun-control targets is obvious, concise and revealed on its web site. 

Hid-carry legal guidelines enhance homicides charges: “Proof reveals that hid carry legal guidelines – when states implement extra permissive hid carry legal guidelines, there’s a small enhance in murder charges. Our personal analysis has discovered proof of that – some suggestive proof,” Morral mentioned.  
Stand-your-ground legal guidelines enhance murder charges: “The present proof is that when states implement stand-your-ground legal guidelines, firearm murder charges enhance,” he mentioned. 

RAND researchers revealed a report final Wednesday, which was funded by Arnold Ventures and a Nationwide Institute of Well being grant, titled “State Insurance policies Regulating Firearms and Modifications in Firearm Mortality.”

Morral was one of many scientists concerned within the mission. 

The target was to estimate the consequences state firearm insurance policies have on gun-related deaths. The researchers examined six insurance policies: “background checks, minimal age, ready intervals, little one entry, hid carry, and stand-your-ground legal guidelines.”

The findings had been blended. Baby-access prevention legal guidelines can cut back gun deaths by 6%, and stand-your-ground legal guidelines can enhance firearm deaths by 6%, the authors claimed.  

“Our discovering that almost all of those particular person state-level firearm insurance policies have comparatively modest and unsure impact sizes displays that every firearm coverage is a small element of a fancy system shaping firearm violence. Nonetheless, we discovered that mixtures of the studied insurance policies had been reliably related to substantial shifts in firearm mortality,” the authors famous. 

The entire authors – Terry L. Schell, PhD; Rosanna Sensible, PhD; Matthew Cefalu, PhD; Beth Ann Griffin, PhD and Morral – work for RAND at both its Santa Monica, California, or Arlington, Virginia, workplaces. 

The entire authors besides Morral disclosed conflicts of curiosity: “Dr Schell reported receiving grants from Arnold Ventures and Nationwide Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism throughout the conduct of the examine. Dr Sensible reported receiving grants from Arnold Ventures and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being throughout the conduct of the examine. Dr Cefalu reported receiving grants from Arnold Ventures throughout the conduct of the examine. Dr Griffin reported receiving grants from Arnold Ventures throughout the conduct of the examine. No different disclosures had been reported.”

The authors claimed that neither Arnold Ventures not the NIH exercised any management of their work.

“The funders had no function within the design and conduct of the examine; assortment, administration, evaluation, and interpretation of the information; preparation, evaluate, or approval of the manuscript; and resolution to submit the manuscript for publication,” the report states. 

RAND’s NIH Grant of $790,100 was awarded Sept. 25, 2020, and is ongoing.  

“Don’t Get Mad About Weapons …” 

Three months in the past, the Hint – the propaganda arm of former New York Metropolis Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire – introduced they had been making a Gun Violence Knowledge Hub, which might “assist journalists entry information on one in all America’s most important – and opaque – public well being crises.”

“The Knowledge Hub is a multiyear mission to extend the accessibility and use of correct information on gun violence in journalism. Its crew of editors, reporters and researchers will proactively acquire and clear datasets for public distribution, write and share tip sheets, and function a useful resource desk to different newsrooms, aiding journalists of their pursuit of data-informed reporting,” the Hint reported.

Arnold Ventures was one of many Knowledge Hub’s high sponsors. 

To be clear, Arnold Ventures has radical anti-gun views. The group believes “firearm violence” constitutes a public well being disaster. “Gun violence,” it claims, has change into the main explanation for dying of “younger individuals,” not youngsters, the group states on its web site. By referring to younger individuals quite than youngsters, they’ll embody 18- to 20-year-olds of their information set to make the numbers work. 

Arnold Ventures needs to bridge the hole in anti-gun analysis, which they are saying was created by the 1996 Dickey Modification, which prohibits the federal authorities from conducting anti-gun analysis. 

Don’t Get Mad About Weapons — Get Funding for Analysis, the group presents on its web site.  

“It isn’t sufficient to get mad about gun violence,” Asheley Van Ness, Arnold Ventures former director of prison justice, wrote in The Houston Chronicle.​“Change begins with satisfactory funding for analysis, or else policymakers could find yourself spending money and time on packages that merely don’t work.”

In 2018, to streamline its funding efforts, Arnold Ventures launched the Nationwide Collaborative on Gun Violence Analysis (NCGVR). Its mission is to “fund and disseminate nonpartisan, scientific analysis that provides the general public and policymakers a factual foundation for growing honest and efficient gun insurance policies.”

“At Arnold Ventures, we use our sources to confront among the most urgent issues going through our nation,” Arnold Ventures President and CEO Kelli Rhee said on the group’s web site. ​“5 years in the past, we, like many others, acknowledged that our understanding of gun violence was affected by a extreme lack of funding in analysis, and we joined along with our companions to attempt to fill among the hole. Whereas extra funding from each private and non-private entities is undoubtedly wanted, the Nationwide Collaborative on Gun Violence Analysis has made vital progress in constructing the gun coverage proof base.”

Since 2022, the NCGVR has issued greater than 50 grants, together with “13 dissertation analysis tasks and 7 post-doctoral analysis fellowships, in addition to awards for big new research on home gun violence, officer-involved shootings, harms to firearm house owners related to gun legal guidelines, gun suicides, gun coverage evaluation and concrete gun violence.”

Arnold Ventures selected RAND to manage the NCGVR, and RAND put Morral in cost. Right now, Morral co-leads the NCGVR, which he says brings RAND “a pair hundred-thousand {dollars} per yr.”

“It was a possibility to enhance analysis within the area,” Morral informed the Second Modification Basis. “It was one thing that appeared like an attention-grabbing mission to work to raise. There wasn’t a lot analysis occurring, and it was an space we had been making an attempt to make some headway in with our personal funding. We acknowledged there was a spot in information about gun coverage that wasn’t being studied.” 

Takeaways

There may be definitely nothing illegal a couple of well-heeled couple sponsoring gun-control analysis or analysis of any sort. The Arnolds are free to spend their tens of millions as they see match. Nonetheless, since their largesse can negatively impression the civil rights of tens of millions of law-abiding People, the Arnolds ought to be ready to reply for his or her philanthropy. 

The couple has created a pipeline of types, money goes in a single finish and anti-gun propaganda comes out the opposite. 

The dangers they’ve created are dire. 

“When a cable TV information actor cites some farcical statistic about weapons or gun house owners, it’s essential to know how that quantity made it onto the teleprompter,” mentioned Second Modification Basis founder and Government Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “It begins with donor {dollars} despatched to researchers at left-leaning schools, universities or different teams, who publish studies that mirror their donors’ views, that are then regurgitated by the company media. It’s a factory-like course of. We don’t have something like that. We don’t want it. We merely depend upon the reality.” 

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