When anti-gun billionaires Laura and John Arnold sent another check to the RAND Corporation for its annual report, “The Science of Gun Policy,” there was little doubt about what RAND researchers would find, since the Arnolds were paying the bills. The annual report is part of a larger anti-gun initiative, which RAND has labeled “Guns in America.”
Before 2018, RAND funded the initiative themselves, through “unrestricted gifts from RAND supporters and income from operations.” After 2018, however, the Arnolds have payed for all of it through their left-wing philanthropy foundation called Arnold Ventures.
And for the fifth year in a row, the billionaire couple has certainly gotten what they paid for.
Six RAND researchers needed more than 440 pages to claim that guns are bad, and that more anti-gun laws are needed.
Here are their major findings:
- The government should be able to order you to lock up your guns.
- Stand-your-ground laws are dangerous.
- The country needs to raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm.
- Waiting periods reduce homicides and suicides.
- Background checks for even private sales reduce homicides.
- Laws barring gun rights to those subject to a domestic violence restraining order decrease homicides.
Here are their recommendations:
- All states should order you to lock up your guns.
- All states should repeal stand-your-ground laws.
- All states should ban concealed carry and permitless carry.
- All states should raise the minimum age to purchase firearms and ammunition.
- All states should ban gun ownership by anyone subject to a restraining order.
- All states should require background checks, even for private sales.
RAND states that its report is cited by mainstream media 75 to 100 times a year. They did offer some good news, however. This is the last edition of the report…which RAND says is still needed. Perhaps the Arnolds don’t think they’re getting the antigun bang they wanted for their millions of bucks.
The RAND report states that, “In the United States, gun policies of every kind are being reconsidered and relitigated in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which fundamentally altered the standards used to assess the constitutionality of firearm laws.”
Most gun owners will strongly disagree with that, regardless of the number of PhDs held by its authors. Bruen didn’t fundamentally alter the standard used to assess the constitutionality of gun laws. Bruen simply returned it to its origins, away from the confusing legal mess that anti-gunners had created for decades, intending to limit gun ownership as much as possible.
The Arnolds
On August 5, 2024, we published a special report about the Arnolds and their anti-gun activities titled “Billionaire anti-gun philanthropists backing biased anti-gun research.” The story revealed how the Arnolds play a major part in producing anti-gun information, which is then circulated across the country.
“An investigation by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project reveals how a former Enron trader and his wife are quietly paying millions of dollars every year to colleges, universities, think tanks and other groups for biased anti-gun research, which is then cited as gospel by the corporate media and used as propaganda by anyone who wants to infringe upon law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” the story states.
Most disturbing was the vast amount of money the couple paid for anti-gun “research,” which was conducted by RAND and other groups. According to their nonprofit’s 2022 IRS form 990, the couple paid RAND at total of $2.8 million, of which $1.7 million was for anti-gun research. That same year, the couple paid more than $1.8 million for anti-gun research from other groups as well
The Arnolds remain very active in the anti-gun community. Recently, they awarded more than half a million dollars for a study in Chicago, New York City, Texas and Washington D.C., which evaluates “the impact of prosecutor-led diversion programs for non-violent gun offenses.”
Takeaways
As we said more than a year ago, the Arnolds have created a pipeline of sorts. Cash goes in one end and anti-gun propaganda emerges from the other. And given its storied 80-year history, it’s sad that RAND is happily playing along.
What their researchers presented was overwritten nonsense, of course, and given that it took them more than 440 pages to regurgitate a list of standard-issue gun control shibboleths, it may be the most overwritten anti-gun document ever produced. I’ve seen basically the same false claims on one-page brochures from poorly funded anti-gun groups.
When the first story ran, Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, pointed out that we don’t have anything as elaborate as this anti-gun pipeline process, adding, “We don’t need it. We simply rely upon the truth.”
That, friends, remains true to this day.
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.
I believe the RAND corporation did say the Vietnam war was winnable. But that was only possible if the democrat party, who was in power, was interested.
Their executives have private armed security. So they do like guns for themselves.