NSSF launched a new campaign this year called Gun Rights Insights. The goal is to drag the big money donors that fuel the gun control campaign into the sunlight. No more hiding behind veils and in corporate boardroom ivory towers.
Gun Rights Insights pulls back the curtain to show that the gun control agenda is nothing more than an astroturf agenda living off the funding and the backing of a few billionaires and progressive activist foundations flooding the field with waves of cash, up to $400 million annually.
With this money, they buy influence, media airtime and followers who buy into the false narrative that surrendering God-given rights will make America safer while they surround themselves with armed security in gated compounds.
Gun Rights Insights previously exposed antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Hollywood A-list celebrities.
Allow Gun Rights Insights to introduce…The Joyce Foundation.
Who They Are
The Joyce Foundation, based in Chicago, was founded by Beatrice Joyce Kean in 1948, the heiress of an Iowa lumber executive. They now pitch the foundation as a “private, nonpartisan philanthropy that invests in public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.”
Founder Kean passed away in 1972, leaving 90 percent of her estate — or $120 million — to the foundation, according to InfluenceWatch, a watchdog group run by the Capital Research Center. Soon after, The Joyce Foundation shifted focus to include government policies. Notably, they target gun control with a board comprised of anti-gun activists.
Chief of among those steering The Joyce Foundation’s work was President Barack Obama, who was on the foundation’s board of directors from 1994–2002, before he entered public life. President Obama espoused strict gun control, calling for a ban on modern sporting rifles, America’s most-popular selling centerfire rifle. He also demanded a national firearm registry through a universal background check scheme.
Valerie Jarrett was a former senior advisor to President Obama and is currently the CEO of the Obama Foundation. She’s a former board member of The Joyce Foundation.
Today, other members of his White House still serve on The Joyce Foundation’s board. Margot Rogers, was the Chief of Staff to the Obama administration’s U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Today, Rogers is The Joyce Foundation’s Chair of the Board. The Vice Chair of the Board is filled by Tracey Maeres, who was on President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Cecilia Munoz served eight years in the Obama administration, including five years leading the White House Domestic Policy Council. Today, Munoz is a board member for the Joyce Foundation.
What They Do
The Joyce Foundation’s role in propelling gun control is through funding research that is used to prop up gun control policies.
“Not only has it bankrolled research, but Joyce brags that it has been instrumental in launching major gun control groups,” The Gun Rights Insights video explains. “Some of the groups include the Violence Policy Center, a group that has faced criticism for misrepresenting facts and inflating numbers to further its position on gun crime. The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, since merged into the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, which call for restrictions on your right to carry as well as government permits to purchase firearms.”
This is the same group, led by Josh Horwitz, that is the driving force to demand all firearms be equipped with unworkable microstamping technology, which is a really a slow-motion gun ban. But the Commerce Department’s National Institutes for Standards and Technology just told Congress there’s no evidence that the tech requirement would actually work.
The video continues, “The group also criticizes locking up violent criminals who abuse guns saying, ‘Policing and incarceration have been the primary means to address gun violence in underserved communities and often these systems have been ineffective and perpetuated or exacerbated racial inequities.’”
That’s not all. The Joyce Foundation has also funded The New Venture Fund, a dark-money organization that has spawned dozens of left-wing advocacy campaigns. That group has been sued by Nebraska’s Attorney General Mike Hilgers for allegedly funneling foreign money into political campaigns.
How They Do It
The Joyce Foundation’s investment in gun control isn’t small. They’ve dropped nearly $100 million into the effort. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to their $1.3 billion in assets at its disposal. In 2024, The Joyce Foundation grew by $85.7 million. While that sum is staggering to most who don’t live in Chicago’s Gold Coast and Lincoln Park, it is still overshadowed by 2021, when The Joyce Foundation reported $150.4 million in revenue and another $114.8 million in 2022.
But that Chicago isn’t the same Windy City everyone else knows.
“The Joyce Foundation’s home city of Chicago is a posterchild of how gun control fails,” the Gun Rights Insights video explains.
That’s because Chicago, and Illinois, have some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. That hasn’t brought crime to a screeching halt. That’s only robbed law-abiding citizens of their ability to defend themselves against violent criminals.
And The Joyce Foundation is bankrolling it.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.