Job losses are mounting in the tech sector, financial industry, the media, and what little manufacturing remains in the United States, but there’s one portion of the economy that seems to be doing just fine: the gun control lobby.
Between the deep pockets of anti-gun billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and the growth in taxpayer-funded positions for gun control activists at all levels of government, anti-2A advocates may enjoy some of the best job security around these days. The White House recently created its Office of Gun Violence Prevention and staffed it full of longtime gun control advocates, and now a growing number of Democratic officials with hiring authority are doing the same with their own offices.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has created a brand new unit operating under the AGs authority, and her first hire is a longtime litigator for one of the biggest gun control groups around.
On Thursday, the Boston Democrat announced that her office had launched a new gun violence prevention unit aimed at “holding accountable bad actors in the gun industry and others who violate our gun laws.”
In a statement, Campbell also announced that she’d tapped two veterans in the fight against gun violence to lead the new office, each of whom bring the “passion and expertise” that will allow the state to “lead the nation on gun safety and gun violence prevention.”
The office’s new director, Christine Doktor, most recently served as the managing attorney for Everytown Law, the legal arm of the gun violence reduction organization, Everytown for Gun Safety.
In a statement, Campbell described the legal group as “the largest and most experienced team of litigators in the nation dedicated to advancing gun safety in the courts and through the civil and criminal justice systems.”
Everytown’s already tapped Nina Pejoves Gorman, who last worked for the New York Legal Assistance Group’s LegalHealth division, as the new managing attorney for Everytown Law; the gun control group’s in-house law firm with more than two dozen attorneys.
Now, the job security is a nice benefit for the individuals working within the gun lobby, but the bigger issue for those of us defending and protecting our fundamental civil right to keep and bear arms is the growing public-private partnership between anti-gun activists and the taxpayer-supported bureaucracy. It’s one thing for a private university like Johns Hopkins to jump into bed with Michael Bloomberg or Josh Horwitz and groups like the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, but now we’re starting to see public institutions do the same.
In Minnesota, for example, the University of Minnesota Law School now has its own “Gun Violence Prevention Clinic” run by visiting professor Megan Walsh, whose last job just happened to be at Everytown Law. In California, there’s the Firearm Violence Research Center; a taxpayer-funded outfit run by longtime anti-gun academic Garen Wintemute from UC-Davis. The University of Colorado has the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, while the University of Michigan has the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention.
Democrat-run localities are getting into the act as well, with offices of “gun violence prevention” established in Philadelphia, Denver, Atlanta, and several other cities over the past few years. King County, Washington just announced its own office a few weeks ago that will cover Seattle and the surrounding King County suburbs.
Executive Dow Constantine announced the launch of the office in partnership with Public Health – Seattle and King County at an event Tuesday.
“The pain of gun violence is all too familiar, and too many of our friends, family and neighbors are facing this preventable tragedy every day,” Constantine said in a release. “Whether it’s a headline from around the country, or right here where we live, work and play, every act of gun violence is something we can stop from happening, but only if we work together. Our new office will connect us with the federal resources of the White House, serve as a hub for the region, and expand our local initiatives to ensure every community in King County can be safe from gun violence.”
The new office also will coordinate with the White House’s recently announced Office of Gun Violence Prevention, according to Constantine.
In addition to advancing current projects in the region, the office will expand Community Violence Intervention services to Kent, Burien and Skyway next year.
As of Oct. 17, Seattle has recorded 64 homicides. Already a double-digit increase from 2022 (Seattle had 52 homicides last year) the city is on pace to surpass the record of 69 homicides in 1994.
Maybe the office can investigate why homicides are going up despite the rash of gun control laws that have been put into place in Washington State over the past decade.
I know, I know. That’s not why these offices exist, and they’d never undertake any research or investigation that might reveal the failure of gun control laws to reduce violent crime. These offices exist to advance the gun control lobby’s prohibitionist agenda, as well as to reward committed gun control activists with a steady gig and perhaps even a government pension when all is said and done. I guess it’s a good gig if you can get it… and you don’t mind collecting a check for trampling over a fundamental civil right.
