- Messages
- 1,745
- Reactions
- 6,128
The following info was posted by one of our sleuthing Liberal Gun Club members in our FB group.
Shared with permission under Common Commons license.
************************************************
You might have heard of that news website called The Trace. As they describe themselves: "The Trace is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to shining a light on America's gun violence crisis."
A lot of their reporting is on the "gun lobby" - i.e. the NRA mostly, and who is backing it. Which is well and good - transparency in politics etc. But when it comes to transparency, it goes both ways; and so a reasonable question becomes - who or what is The Trace?
If you go to their website, they have an About section with many words on it about transparency and editorial independence. And they even have a list of all their editors, and most of their management (scroll down to "Who We Are"):
About The Trace
Now, one curious thing about that list is that it has the editorial director, but it doesn't mention the president. A curious omission - and you might wonder who that is. If you try to look it up, though, it's surprisingly difficult to find out. E.g. on their website, none of the pages on transparency even so much as mention the existence of that position. To the best of my knowledge, no mainstream media outlet has ever reported it, even back when they were founded. You can find some mentions, but they're all in the kinds of news sources that can only be described as "fringe". So I had to go and do my own research.
It can be found on the website itself, though - but in the one and only place where they can't avoid not saying this. To find that one place, go to "About The Trace", scroll down to "Our supporters", click on the link to their donor transparency policy page, and finally scroll down all the way to the bottom, where there is a link for "Our most recent tax filings". Click on that, and you will see their IRS Form 990. Look at Box F - "Name and address of principal officer". For your convenience, it is on the screenshot below.
And just to show how much they don't want anybody finding out about this little fact, let's see if the website mentions the name anywhere else:
https://www.google.com/search…
So, who is John Feinblatt? If you google that name, the first thing you'll probably find is that he is also the president of Everytown for Gun Safety - that fact is not concealed at all.
The broad connection between The Trace and Everytown is well-known, and they do not deny it outright - but they generally say things like "Everytown is one of our supporters". On the donor financial transparency page, you can see Everytown mentioned in the list titled "Support for The Trace comes from these groups, among others". When they cite some statements by Everytown in their news stories, they generally add verbiage such as "one of the donors":
https://www.google.com/search…
But let's be clear here about what this fact really means: The Trace is effectively a mouthpiece for Everytown. Same people run both.
How did Feinblatt become the president of Everytown? Well, Everytown was founded by Michael Bloomberg - or rather, it grew out of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns organization (of which Feinblatt was also the president), after merging with Shannon Watts' Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense (MDA). So it's effectively a Bloomberg-run and Bloomberg-funded operation - and the key people in it are his trusted aides.
What exactly makes John Feinblatt a trusted aide of Michael Bloomberg? When Bloomberg was the mayor of NYC, Feinblatt was his chief advisor for policy and strategic planning. Here's the archived page of the NYC government website with his profile:
https://web.archive.org/…/menuitem.047d873163b30…/index.jsp…
The most interesting bit on that page is this:
"Mr. Feinblatt has held the position of Criminal Justice Coordinator for the City of New York since January 2002. He serves as the Mayor's chief advisor on criminal justice policy and liaison to the state court system, the city's five elected District Attorneys and the state criminal justice system."
So, the guy was responsible for the criminal justice policy under Bloomberg. If you need a refresher on what that included:
• https://www.cnn.com/…/p…/bloomberg-stop-and-frisk/index.html
• https://www.npr.org/…/broken-windows-policing-and-the-origi…
And, indeed, the name "Feinblatt" shows up a lot if you do research on stop-and-frisk - and he's always the guy vociferously defending it. For example:
https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/…/survey-on-gun-carryin…/
The convenient thing about him, though, is that he talks too much - and so sometimes he inadvertently spells out *what* it was really about:
"The data is clear. In New York City, young minority males are more likely to report carrying a gun than any other group. The youth themselves report this. They are also far more likely to be the victims of gun violence. It makes sense that police enforcement resources are in neighborhoods where high-risk groups are most at risk of gun violence."
Next time you read a story from The Trace, bear this quote in mind, please. I'm not saying that they are always lying or distorting the facts (although they do that a fair bit). Just keep in mind that they do have an agenda - it's not just some kind of community service. And given how hard they're trying to conceal the Feinblatt-Everytown-Bloomberg connection, it's clear that they don't want people to know about that agenda.
(Rather ironic for people ostensibly so concerned about exposing the covert gun lobby, don't you think?)
Which is exactly why I'm writing this post. There's no shortage of similar research on the NRA - indeed, whenever a new piece comes out, as it does regularly in the past 2 years or so, it always makes headlines on CNN etc. But there's very little on the lobbying organizations opposing them - chief of which is Everytown, and their various fronts (such as The Trace). Which creates a rather skewed media image: the horribly corrupt NRA vs the brave and selfless champions of truth and justice.
The truth is: they both want to screw you, just in different ways. And as different as those ways are, when you look at the underlying motivation, there's some curious overlap there: "young minority males" show up a lot in the NRA agitprop, as well - except they pitch it as a reason for more guns, rather than more gun control.
(This post is made under CC0: Creative Commons — CC0 1.0 Universal. I hereby waive all copyright and related or neighboring rights together with all associated claims and causes of action with respect to this work to the extent possible under the law. Feel free to share for any purpose whatsoever.)
Shared with permission under Common Commons license.
************************************************
You might have heard of that news website called The Trace. As they describe themselves: "The Trace is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to shining a light on America's gun violence crisis."
A lot of their reporting is on the "gun lobby" - i.e. the NRA mostly, and who is backing it. Which is well and good - transparency in politics etc. But when it comes to transparency, it goes both ways; and so a reasonable question becomes - who or what is The Trace?
If you go to their website, they have an About section with many words on it about transparency and editorial independence. And they even have a list of all their editors, and most of their management (scroll down to "Who We Are"):
About The Trace
Now, one curious thing about that list is that it has the editorial director, but it doesn't mention the president. A curious omission - and you might wonder who that is. If you try to look it up, though, it's surprisingly difficult to find out. E.g. on their website, none of the pages on transparency even so much as mention the existence of that position. To the best of my knowledge, no mainstream media outlet has ever reported it, even back when they were founded. You can find some mentions, but they're all in the kinds of news sources that can only be described as "fringe". So I had to go and do my own research.
It can be found on the website itself, though - but in the one and only place where they can't avoid not saying this. To find that one place, go to "About The Trace", scroll down to "Our supporters", click on the link to their donor transparency policy page, and finally scroll down all the way to the bottom, where there is a link for "Our most recent tax filings". Click on that, and you will see their IRS Form 990. Look at Box F - "Name and address of principal officer". For your convenience, it is on the screenshot below.
And just to show how much they don't want anybody finding out about this little fact, let's see if the website mentions the name anywhere else:
https://www.google.com/search…
So, who is John Feinblatt? If you google that name, the first thing you'll probably find is that he is also the president of Everytown for Gun Safety - that fact is not concealed at all.
The broad connection between The Trace and Everytown is well-known, and they do not deny it outright - but they generally say things like "Everytown is one of our supporters". On the donor financial transparency page, you can see Everytown mentioned in the list titled "Support for The Trace comes from these groups, among others". When they cite some statements by Everytown in their news stories, they generally add verbiage such as "one of the donors":
https://www.google.com/search…
But let's be clear here about what this fact really means: The Trace is effectively a mouthpiece for Everytown. Same people run both.
How did Feinblatt become the president of Everytown? Well, Everytown was founded by Michael Bloomberg - or rather, it grew out of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns organization (of which Feinblatt was also the president), after merging with Shannon Watts' Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense (MDA). So it's effectively a Bloomberg-run and Bloomberg-funded operation - and the key people in it are his trusted aides.
What exactly makes John Feinblatt a trusted aide of Michael Bloomberg? When Bloomberg was the mayor of NYC, Feinblatt was his chief advisor for policy and strategic planning. Here's the archived page of the NYC government website with his profile:
https://web.archive.org/…/menuitem.047d873163b30…/index.jsp…
The most interesting bit on that page is this:
"Mr. Feinblatt has held the position of Criminal Justice Coordinator for the City of New York since January 2002. He serves as the Mayor's chief advisor on criminal justice policy and liaison to the state court system, the city's five elected District Attorneys and the state criminal justice system."
So, the guy was responsible for the criminal justice policy under Bloomberg. If you need a refresher on what that included:
• https://www.cnn.com/…/p…/bloomberg-stop-and-frisk/index.html
• https://www.npr.org/…/broken-windows-policing-and-the-origi…
And, indeed, the name "Feinblatt" shows up a lot if you do research on stop-and-frisk - and he's always the guy vociferously defending it. For example:
https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/…/survey-on-gun-carryin…/
The convenient thing about him, though, is that he talks too much - and so sometimes he inadvertently spells out *what* it was really about:
"The data is clear. In New York City, young minority males are more likely to report carrying a gun than any other group. The youth themselves report this. They are also far more likely to be the victims of gun violence. It makes sense that police enforcement resources are in neighborhoods where high-risk groups are most at risk of gun violence."
Next time you read a story from The Trace, bear this quote in mind, please. I'm not saying that they are always lying or distorting the facts (although they do that a fair bit). Just keep in mind that they do have an agenda - it's not just some kind of community service. And given how hard they're trying to conceal the Feinblatt-Everytown-Bloomberg connection, it's clear that they don't want people to know about that agenda.
(Rather ironic for people ostensibly so concerned about exposing the covert gun lobby, don't you think?)
Which is exactly why I'm writing this post. There's no shortage of similar research on the NRA - indeed, whenever a new piece comes out, as it does regularly in the past 2 years or so, it always makes headlines on CNN etc. But there's very little on the lobbying organizations opposing them - chief of which is Everytown, and their various fronts (such as The Trace). Which creates a rather skewed media image: the horribly corrupt NRA vs the brave and selfless champions of truth and justice.
The truth is: they both want to screw you, just in different ways. And as different as those ways are, when you look at the underlying motivation, there's some curious overlap there: "young minority males" show up a lot in the NRA agitprop, as well - except they pitch it as a reason for more guns, rather than more gun control.
(This post is made under CC0: Creative Commons — CC0 1.0 Universal. I hereby waive all copyright and related or neighboring rights together with all associated claims and causes of action with respect to this work to the extent possible under the law. Feel free to share for any purpose whatsoever.)
