The citizen control movement is a movement that has slowly been asphyxiating over the past 40 years.

Most of the “old-line” gun control groups have faded out of existence, and those that do remain are shadows of their former selves. The Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence exist almost entirely on handouts from a handful of deep-pocketed progressive political groups, and are largely irrelevant as political forces. They merely exist now to serve up soundbites for lazy mainstream media journalists, and even these journalists are starting to recognize that citing these groups damages their credibility instead of helping their stories.

For all intents and purposes, the citizen control movement was flat-lining when it was recently be revived—however temporarily—by Michael Bloomberg’s infusion of $50 million from his personal coffers to bankroll his fourth attempt at imposing gun control on the American people, via Everytown for Gun Safety.

“Everytown” is the second attempt to re-brand of the tattered remains of the membership-hemorrhaging Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), and the new, but brand-damaged Moms Demand Action for Gunsense in America.

Bloomberg first attempted to re-brand the combine MAIG/Moms Demand mash-up as the still-borne”Demand Action,” but that attempt proved to be as popular as a super-group composed of Nickleback and Coldplay.

Still in diapers, “Everytown” appears to be quickly heading down the same road to obscurity.

Just 156 tired souls answered Bloomberg’s call to counter-protest the NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis held just miles from Moms Demand founder Shannon Watts’s home.

I know how sad of a protest it was, because I was there. I’ve attended wakes with more enthusiasm.

Moms Demand Action From Illegal Mayors in Everytown and the few foundation-supported groups still exist at all only because they practice two kinds of deception.

They lie (repeatedly) to the mainstream media and the public, which the media doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest since they are equally anti-gun and anti-liberty. The public, however, has caught on to the fact that the Michael Bloombergs, Shannon Wattses, Ladd Everitts and the Joshes (Sugarmann and Horwitz) of the citizen control movement are pathological, egotistical, and well, crazed.

Even sadder than their attempts to lie to the public, however, is the tendency of these groups to lie to themselves about their own power, influence, and impact.

Power

None of the gun control groups can support themselves with paid memberships. There simply aren’t enough Americans that desire to gut the Second Amendment for these groups to self-fund. In opposition, the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, Second Amendment Foundation, and other liberty-minded groups protecting the Second Amendment gun rights of Americans are not only self-funded, but they are expanding rapidly and flush with cash from dues-paying members.

Influence

As previously noted, most of the nation’s gun control groups have faded into obscurity, and the handful that do remain do so at the behest of anti-liberty “progressive” foundations that value government power far more than individual liberty. These gun control groups have little significant influence outside of their spoon-feeding of propaganda to the media, and that influence can be countered and perhaps destroyed if gun rights advocates chose to donate to John Lott’s campaign to fund the Crime Prevention Research Council, which hopes to counter anti-gun “research” with real research into the causes of crime.

Only Everytown, funded entirely by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, has any influence at all, and even that influence is seriously compromised because of Bloomberg’s poisonous ego and Shannon Watts’s inability to tell the truth.

Impact

Though gun control groups thought that they’d be able to use the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary to change national policy and eviscerate the Second Amendment, they failed on the national level, had only limited success on the state level, and instead triggered the largest firearms and ammunition buying spree in the history of the United States.

Their continued efforts to undermine the constitution have only caused the pro-Second Amendment movement to grow and spread to the wider culture, as an article today discussing the easing of the national ammunition shortage revealed:

The rise in demand for guns and ammunition dates back about a decade, said Mike Bazinet, director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Some Americans decided to become gun owners after the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller affirmed the right to keep guns in the home, he said.

Also, shooting has become more popular as a hobby, with retailers reporting that 25 percent of their customers buying guns are first-time owners.

“Ranges have become more friendly. They’re becoming more of a destination,” Mr. Bazinet said. “People go to ranges and share their experiences with friends on social media.”

Citizen control activists can indeed continue scare those who are by nature fearful and distrusting, but that is a relatively small percentage of the overall population, and most of these people can be educated past their fears.

Selling fear via serial dishonesty simply isn’t a viable model when it is going up against something that is fun, intellectually stimulating, physically-challenging, and emotionally fulfilling as shooting.

Michael Bloomberg can afford to throw tens of millions of dollars into his anti-liberty vanity project in his waning years… he can’t take his billions with him when he goes.

What he can’t do, at any price, is change the enjoyment and feeling of accomplishment that a new shooter feels the first time they go to the range with family or friends, and because of that, his efforts to undermine the Second Amendment, like all previous attempts by others that would restrain essential liberty, are doomed.