Some of us remember all the horror stories about the Koch brothers. These two billionaires were using their money to fund various politically-focused organizations, namely those that advanced center-right to right-wing positions. The two were pretty libertarian and used their money accordingly.

As one does.

But the media lost their minds over it. The Koch name became the boogieman for the left as they were accused of all manner of evil. No one said jack squat about Michael Bloomberg single-handedly funding gun control organizations, though.

That's because there's a double standard when it comes to wealthy people and political advocacy. Very rich people spending money to advance politics is only acceptable if they advance the correct politics. When they fail to do that, then they're covered by the mainstream media as a shadowy figure trying to manipulate American politics.

When they advance the correct causes, well, they're ignored.

Which is why this couple went unheard of for so long.

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.

Billionaires Laura and John Arnold — through Arnold Ventures, a Houston-based for-profit corporation the couple founded to “proactively achieve social change” and their nonprofit, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation — are quietly bankrolling research that promotes and supports their radical anti-gun views. Their Foundation has more than $3.5 billion in assets.

Despite their predilection to work in secret, the couple’s actions have not gone unnoticed.  

“Arnold Ventures is the gun control backer most Americans have never heard of. They quietly work behind the scenes, unlike Michael Bloomberg. However, their influence on trying to shape gun control policy rivals that of the biggest backers of antigun efforts. They regularly donate money to think tanks and academia to propel biased research into the policy arena. Arnold Venture’s philanthropic outreach sounds well-intentioned, but they’re serving up snake oil when they peddle firearms as a disease,” Mark Oliva, public affairs director for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said last week.

The Arnolds’ massive financial clout creates an unholy alliance between grantor and grantee. Their paid researchers publish findings that support the couple’s views, or they risk the cash spigot being turned off and the loss of millions of dollars to their organization.

When it comes to their donations, it is clear who determines where the money goes.

“Laura and John established the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2010. They believe philanthropy should be transformational and should seek through innovation to solve persistent problems in society. As co-founders, Laura and John actively engage in the organization’s overall direction and daily execution,” the group’s website states.

Now, John Arnold was part of Enron but, at Lee Williams notes in the above-linked piece, he left before the company imploded and has never been accused of wrongdoing in that disaster. 

That's important to note because I'm going to be very critical of him.

And the supposed research he helps fund.

See, we've written an awful lot about the issues with gun research. I still find it ironic that a Bloomberg columnist called out the issues with gun research, considering who Michael Bloomberg is and what he funds, but that just makes the arguments that much more persuasive, if you ask me. The truth is that even some findings should have had pro-gun results at a much higher rate than what we've seen, and if the Arnolds are funding research that just happens to coincide with their views, well...

We've long known to be skeptical of funding sources and how they impact the studies they research, but the issue with the Foundation is that it's not obvious that the studies are being funded by someone with an agenda.

Moreover, the media isn't going to look, either. 

They'll look at anyone reaching a pro-gun conclusion like they're suspected of a crime, as we've recently seen all too well, but if they like the result, they don't bother to delve any deeper. They don't care about who paid for what.

Yet if the "gun lobby" funding a researcher is troubling, shouldn't anti-gunners funding research that happens to reach anti-gun results just as suspect? 

It's unfortunate that we don't have a media built on skepticism of authority. If we did, we might see them raise questions when things don't pass the sniff test in general, rather than when it doesn't pass a heavily biased one. They don't raise questions about anti-gun research because nothing about it seems suspect to them. They don't question it because it conforms with their own beliefs and ideologies.

And people like the Arnolds continue to fund it because it advances their pet causes. After all, no one in the mainstream media will even raise an eyebrow.