The most astroturfed political subject in modern politics. https://t.co/4I5G9MyKdT pic.twitter.com/mSnz2OZle7
— ✳️Ⓐ Armed Joy 🔫💣 (@ArmedJ0y) May 31, 2026
What Armed Joy is pointing out in the video above is spot-on and something that doesn’t get enough attention. The average Democrat voter wants stricter gun control laws, all things being equal. But it’s almost never a top five or even a top 10 issue for them. The only exception to this is for short periods of time right after a high profile shooting.
Gun control just isn’t something Dems organize for or donate to on a broad basis. Anti-gun social media doesn’t matter. No one reads it but us. They get almost no engagement except right after a mass shooting. They exist for one audience only: elected Democrats who receive Bloomberg bucks and then do whatever Everytown demands. Even the media-backed burst of energy after Parkland and those large DC marches were aided greatly by massive outside organization, money, celebrities, etc. It was never a grassroots effort.
Compare the level of engagement the anti-gun groups get on social media to, for example, pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. The Dem base cares far more about issues like that than they do about gun control. Yet gun bans are invariably one of the first things elected Dems pass when they take over a state, even when it wasn’t a top issue of their campaign.
In Virginia, for instance, many Spanberger voters in platforms like Reddit are annoyed she signed the “assault weapons” ban into law. I’m not sure what they expected, but whatever. That’s because what the anti-gun orgs lack in organic grassroots energy, they more than make up for in Michael Bloomberg’s cash. He gave hundreds of thousands to elect Spanberger and Jones and they’re repaying him.
For years anti-gunners claimed the NRA buys politicians, but that was always pure projection. That’s what they do. Gun rights orgs like SAF, NRA, GOA, etc. have thousands or even millions of dues-paying members behind them. Yet we’re often more than countered by one authoritarian billionaire who singlehandedly outspends us all.
Michael Bloomberg is worth more than the entire American gun industry’s combined economic activity, let alone whatever the nonprofit gun rights orgs have. It’s frustrating. It’d be nice if we had one of our own uber-rich guys to counter it. Unfortunately only Elon has ever stepped up for that kind of thing and gun rights are likely too far outside his area of interest. (Prove me wrong Elon! )
A 2020 New York Times article said:
According to his spokesman, Mr. Bloomberg has underwritten the gun control movement with a total of $270 million since 2007.
That number has only grown since 2020.
To compare, a 2017 Politifact article says the NRA, which again, represents millions of dues-paying members, spent $203.2 million on all political activities in the 20 years between 1998 to 2017. So Michael Bloomberg, one wealthy man, has outspent the NRA all by himself in about half the time.
The gun rights movement doesn’t have that kind of funding behind it. If only it did.
Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation.