Senator Bernie Sanders has made promises to gun lobby groups in the past, and he doesn’t want to talk about them. Why? In the article linked above, which dealt, in some depth, with Senator Sanders’ record on gun control, the Washington Post noted that both Senator Sanders and Wayne LaPierre declined to comment.
Exactly what assurances and promises were given by Senator Sanders? What did he do or say that would have Wayne LaPierre write a letter endorsing him for Congress—against a Republican—in 1990?
Viewed as a lesser evil by the NRA versus a Republican? He could never be an ally of the NRA, as he keeps saying he gets a “D-” minus rating from them.
But there it is, in black and white in the Washington Post. Moreover, when you make a bargain with the devil, you better keep that bargain. And, so it seems that Senator Sanders did:
So far, Senator Sanders has voted against a form of the Brady Bill five times! Notice how in the debates he says that he’s for background checks, but he always slips in the word “instant.” Why might the NRA like “instant” background checks versus regular background checks? Because they have been impossible to accomplish with our current technology and the extent of the database.
And since then, Senator Sanders has voted to allow guns on checked baggage on Amtrak trains. He’s voted to allow them into National Parks. He’s voted to give the gun industry immunity. Twice. In 1997, the Senator proclaimed that he was “pro-gun and pro-hunting.”
In 2006, Senator Sanders voted to make it harder for the ATF to prosecute illegal gun sales. In 2007, he voted to prohibit foreign funding restrictions based on American gun ownership. In 2008, he voted to make sure that funds used by Native Americans could not be used for anti-gun programs. In 2009, in an amendment to ObamaCare, he voted against higher insurance premiums for gun owners.
Surely because he has gotten a “D-” from the NRA the NRA must have spent a gazillion dollars against him. Right?
Wrong.
At this link for opensecrets.org, you can view how much the NRA has spent against the Senator from Vermont and when. I’ll save you the trouble of looking up all of those years. The NRA spent zero ($0) dollars in donations to Senator Sanders’ opponents from 1990 to the present. You have to go through each cycle, and there are multiple pages for each election, as the NRA donated to a lot of people. They never donated to an opponent of Senator Sanders. Not once.
Zero dollars.
I wonder if, for example, Goldman Sachs has ever donated to an opponent of Secretary Clinton? That’s a pretty interesting question, isn’t it? Well, yes, they have:
And that doesn’t include the 24 million or so dollars that Rudy Giuliani raked in during that election cycle. Who knows where that money came from. But what about Citizens United? Not the Supreme Court case, I mean the actual group Citizens United. Have they ever donated to an opponent of Senator Sanders? I know they’ve donated to an opponent of Secretary Clinton:
You can find those charts at opensecrets.org.