Eric Reed is one of the chief activists behind the “Everytown” Facebook effort to counter Michael B loomberg’s $50 million anti-gun effort.
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
UPDATE (April 19) — A grassroots effort to grab momentum from anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s launch of a $50 million “grassroots” gun control campaign may have been derailed three days after it started, with Facebook apparently pulling down the main page of a pro-bun “Everytown for Gun Safety” Facebook site.
Bloomberg launched the big money effort April 16 and apparently had everything lined up—publicity in major newspapers, network air time and a slick video designed to pull the emotional heartstrings—but not the most popular social media Facebook platform, allowing gun rights activists to pounce. At least, for a while.
But it didn’t last, at least the main Facebook page. By April 19, that page had been removed from Facebook, igniting anger from gun owners, at Bloomberg and at Facebook.
Activists originally did it on a shoestring budget; what Bloomberg might spend on a pair of shoestrings for his designer footwear, that is. But shoestrings evidently don’t stack up to billion-dollar influence.
Bloomberg’s launch of “Everytown for Gun Safety” was supposed to ignite a new push for gun control legislation. It was a “re-structuring” of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, two floundering organizations he has financed. He appeared on television with Moms’ founder Shannon Watts, and the New York Times did a flowery piece on his effort.
But two gun rights activists—Eric Reed in Texas and Heather Coleman in West Virginia—did a number on “Everytown,” and it turned into one of the slickest pieces of gun rights guerrilla warfare that has ever been waged, and at this writing, individual Everytown state and local Facebook pages were still up and running.
Reed told TGM that almost immediately after Bloomberg announced his big money project, one of his fellow activists at Gun Rights Across America (GRAA) did a bit of checking and learned that “Everytown for Gun Safety” had not created a Facebook page, nor did they even own the domain name.
Reed told his colleague to “go for it,” and within hours, he was working with Coleman and their combined networks of activists to turn what could have been a juggernaut into an embarrassing train derailment, albiet apparently short-lived.
Every one of the more than 200 state and local “Everytown for Gun Safety” pages features true gun safety tips and they stress the importance of safety. Many include links to such things as the National Rifle Association’s “Eddie Eagle” program to posting the three key gun safety golden rules: Always keep guns pointed in a safe direction, always keep guns unloaded until ready to use, and always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
That is probably not what Bloomberg envisioned. In addition to individual Facebook pages in every state, there were some launched for local communities. There is even one site called “Everytown for the NRA.”
The whole thing launched just a few days before the 239th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. The activists involved in commandeering “Everytown” Facebook pages turned out like Minutemen of old, but instead of muskets, powder, ball and flint, they just used keyboards.
Within 48 hours, according to Coleman and Reed, these Facebook pages had nearly 90,000 followers. It was a political tsunami.
“I didn’t think it was going to start getting this viral,” Reed said. “We all know that Bloomberg’s agenda is a joke. It has nothing to do with stopping violence. It has to do with disarming people. That to me makes him an enemy of the constitution so I decided to do everything I could to foil his agenda.”
“They did everything that they could just to stick it to Bloomberg,” Coleman added. “We’re tired of having it stuck to us, we’re sick of it.”
Reed is still astounded that with all the money Bloomberg poured into this effort, he didn’t have someone on staff doing the social media. One might call it the “Facebook loophole.”
Reed and Coleman have never actually met, but their effort demonstrated that teamwork on–line doesn’t require a handshake. It just needs a common goal.
This political sitcom does have some serious undertones for activists in Washington State, where the Bloomberg effort is expected to drop a wad of cash to support a gun control initiative disguised as a “universal background check” measure.
The Seattle P-I.com’s Joel Connelly put the dueling initiatives battle in Washington State in its proper perspective. In his on-line column following Bloomberg’s initial announcement, Connelly observed, “Washington is likely a major national testing ground for Bloomberg’s group. The state faces a political gun battle in the November election.”
That battle will see Initiatives 591 and 594 square off for voter approval, and if both pass, an interesting constitutional question will come up. Which measure will prevail? So far, nobody has an answer.
I-591 is a simple one-page measure that prohibits government gun confiscation without due process, and requires that background checks in Washington comply with a uniform national standard. I-594 is an 18-page gun control measure ostensibly being promoted as a so-called “universal background check” mandate, but critics say it goes farther, setting the stage for registration and establishing an unfunded mandate for local law enforcement.
Connelly unintentionally established a major credibility gap that I-594 backers may never overcome. At least three times in his piece, Connelly referred to I-594 proponents as the “gun safety movement.” This is a “gun control” effort, mounted by the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR), an organization that even Connelly acknowledged is – in his words – “Seattle-centric.”
Connelly noted during a telephone conversation with TGM that WAGR might not be able to push a convincing “grass roots” image that Bloomberg’s big bucks apparently wants to create for the gun prohibition lobby. He suggested that the I-594’s roots are pretty much confined to lawns around a few churches and homes in Seattle.
The I-594 movement has attracted several Seattle-area faith leaders.
“Gun safety” has nothing to do with I-594 or the broader Bloomberg lobbying effort, and that might best be illustrated by a blog posted by Steve Sanetti, president of the National Sport Shooting Foundation (NSSF), the organization based in Newtown, Conn., located not far from Sandy Hook Elementary, scene of the December 2012 tragedy that ignited the current gun prohibition movement.
Referring to Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” effort, Sanetti wrote that “The new group’s unstated mission might well be ‘Everytown Without Guns’.” He followed that up with a description of what “real gun safety looks like.”
That description included 70 million gun locks provided with new firearms over the past 15 years, 36 million free firearm safety kits with free gun lock distribution through NSSF’s “Project ChildSafe” conducted in partnership with 15,000 police agencies, and the fulfillment of 3.6 million requests for firearm safety materials. In addition to those efforts detailed by Sanetti, the National Rifle Association’s gun safety efforts put thousands of volunteer firearms instructors in communities across the map, teaching millions of Americans about firearm safety in the home, on the street and in the field.
Gun rights activists call themselves the “real gun safety proponents,” while argung that “safety” as defined by gun control supporters amounts to discouraging gun ownership through fear mongering, social bigotry and outright lies.
This battle on Facebook may be just beginning. Many activists are promising that if their individual Facebook pages are pulled down, they will re-launch under new banners.
