by Libby Moyer

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the gun control movement, with reporting (including a 2020 New York Times figure) putting his total contributions to the cause at roughly $270 million since around 2007. He co-founded and heavily funds Everytown for Gun Safety (the 2014 merger of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action), pledging $50 million at launch and regularly supplying a major share of its budget—often cited as a quarter to a third. His agenda includes universal background checks on private sales, high-capacity magazine bans, raising the purchase age to 21, red-flag/ERPO laws, waiting periods, secure storage mandates, ghost-gun restrictions, and more. Everytown ranks states and pushes these measures hard through local chapters and advocacy. Everyone ranks Vermont gun laws at #17 with California #1 and Idaho # 50.  

Vermont hunters and gun owners have already felt it. The state—long a constitutional carry, low-crime, hunting stronghold with deep rural traditions—has adopted several of these policies in recent years (private-sale checks, magazine limits, age 21, extreme risk orders, a 72-hour waiting period, and more), with Vermont Moms Demand Action chapters actively lobbying. Most gun deaths in Vermont are suicides, yet the response has been new restrictions that hit law-abiding owners, sportsmen, and self-defense rights. 

The same pattern is playing out on climate. As detailed in the Energy Security and Freedom Substack piece by Kyle Kohli (from Energy In Depth): “Mike Bloomberg, the Climate Lawfarer, Retreats to Vermont,” the Bloomberg-backed NYU center that embedded privately paid lawyers in Democratic AG offices for energy  lawsuits shut down after scrutiny—and its team quietly relocated to Vermont Law and Graduate School under the MAPLE Initiative.  

Vermonts Hunters and Second Amendment supporters should ask: is the next step more of the same for guns—using Vermont institutions to advance restrictions that ignore the state’s safe, responsible ownership culture? 

Groups like the Vermont Traditions Coalition—a coalition of sporting, hunting, fishing, trapping, snowmobile, and traditional land-use organizations with a full-time presence in Montpelier—have long fought to protect Vermont’s hunting heritage and outdoor way of life against outside pressures and restrictive policies. Vermont’s hunters, sportsmen, and NRA members know responsible gun ownership is part of the state’s identity. Can a big outside money and activist networks redefine it and Vermont’s culture? 

Your vote counts – get out and vote to protect the Second Amendment, hunting traditions, and the rights of law-abiding Vermonters.  

Libby Moyer works in communications through firm http://www.clearlytv.com and lives in Vershire.