When billionaire couple Laura and John Arnold lower one other verify to the RAND Company for the newest version of “The Science of Gun Coverage,” the result was as predictable as ever. In spite of everything, once you’re footing your entire invoice, you are likely to get the outcomes you’re on the lookout for.
This marks the fifth annual installment of RAND’s “Weapons in America” initiative, and as soon as once more, it delivers precisely what its funders needed to listen to: weapons are harmful, and People want extra restrictions on their Second Modification rights.
Comply with the Cash
Right here’s what you have to know concerning the funding: Earlier than 2018, RAND coated the initiative by means of inside funds and unrestricted donations. Since then, nevertheless, the Arnolds’ left-wing Arnold Ventures basis has bankrolled your entire operation.
The outcome? Six RAND researchers produced a sprawling 440-page doc that reads like a want checklist from Everytown for Gun Security.
The “Findings” and Suggestions
The report’s main conclusions will shock completely nobody aware of gun management advocacy speaking factors:
Their claimed findings:
Secure storage legal guidelines work
Stand-your-ground legal guidelines are harmful
We want greater minimal ages for firearms purchases
Ready durations cut back homicides and suicides
Common background checks cut back homicides
Home violence restraining orders ought to strip gun rights
Their suggestions:
Necessary secure storage legal guidelines in all states
Repeal all stand-your-ground legal guidelines
Ban hid carry and constitutional carry nationwide
Increase minimal age necessities for firearms and ammunition
Prohibit gun possession for anybody topic to a restraining order
Mandate background checks for all personal gross sales
RAND notes their report will get cited by mainstream media 75-100 occasions yearly—a handy association for pushing a predetermined narrative.
One Silver Lining
There’s some excellent news: that is supposedly the ultimate version of the annual report. RAND claims the report is not wanted as a result of “gun insurance policies of each form are being reconsidered and relitigated within the wake of the Supreme Courtroom’s 2022 Bruen choice, which essentially altered the requirements used to evaluate the constitutionality of firearm legal guidelines.”
Let’s be clear about one thing: Bruen didn’t “essentially alter” something. It merely restored constitutional sanity by sweeping away many years of judicial gymnastics that anti-gun advocates had used to chip away on the Second Modification. Bruen returned us to the textual content, historical past, and custom customary—the way in which it ought to have been all alongside.
The Arnold Anti-Gun Pipeline
Because the Second Modification Basis’s Investigative Journalism Challenge revealed final August, the Arnolds have constructed an efficient propaganda machine. The previous Enron dealer and his spouse funnel tens of millions yearly to universities, assume tanks, and analysis organizations for predetermined “research” that company media then cites as goal science.
The numbers are staggering. In response to Arnold Ventures’ 2022 IRS filings, they paid RAND $2.8 million, with $1.7 million particularly earmarked for gun management analysis. The identical 12 months, they distributed one other $1.8 million to different teams for related work.
Extra just lately, they’ve funded over half 1,000,000 {dollars} for research in Chicago, New York Metropolis, Texas, and D.C. evaluating “prosecutor-led diversion packages for non-violent gun offenses.”
The Backside Line
What the Arnolds have created is easy: a well-funded pipeline the place money flows in a single finish and anti-gun propaganda emerges from the opposite, wrapped in educational credentials and introduced as goal analysis.
It’s disappointing to see a company with RAND’s 80-year popularity prepared to function a rubber stamp for ideology masquerading as science. The 440 pages of this report may have been condensed to a single-page flyer—and infrequently are by less-funded gun management teams making the identical drained arguments.
As SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb famous when this funding scheme was first uncovered: we don’t want an elaborate propaganda pipeline on the pro-Second Modification facet. “We don’t want it. We merely depend on the reality.”
And the reality is that this: People’ constitutional rights aren’t up on the market, irrespective of what number of billionaire-funded research say in any other case.
