The Big Five Gun Control Groups
Everytown for Gun Safety | Giffords
March for Our Lives | Final Thoughts
Gun control is one of the perennially polarizing social fault lines running through modern American politics. While the past two decades have seen much success for Second Amendment supporters and the current national political climate is broadly in their favor, the gun control movement remains well-funded and active.
In 2023, the Capital Research Center examined the landscape, funders, and policies of gun control activism, which is dominated (at least financially) by five nonprofit organizations: Everytown, Giffords, Brady, March for Our Lives, and Sandy Hook Promise. Each of these groups consist of both a 501(c)(3) charitable and a 501(c)(4) political/lobbying arm, and three also operate political action committees (PACs).
These five groups, despite their occasional differences, can be viewed as collectively representing the American gun control movement. They also illustrate some of the realities of contemporary nonprofit political issue activism and the funding that supports it.
Everytown for Gun Safety
In the world of gun control activism, there is Everytown, and there is everything else. It is by far the largest and most powerful such organization in the country. Over the two-year period from 2022–2023 its 501(c)(4) revenues were more than twice the 501(c)(4) revenues of the four other groups combined, while its 501(c)(3) revenues were equal to over 85 percent of those groups’ combined total. From a financial standpoint, nothing else compares.
Everytown was formed through a 2013 merger of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, both of which continue to exist under the Everytown umbrella today. Billionaire politician and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, who had been instrumental in creating Mayors Against Illegal Guns while serving as mayor New York City in 2006, committed $50 million at Everytown’s launch in 2014. Bloomberg is doubtless the single most important individual funder of gun control activism in the United States, with a 2020 New York Times article reporting that he had given as much as $270 million to the cause since 2007. This includes significant support for Everytown, with which he remains so closely identified that the Times recently characterized the organization as “Bloomberg’s gun control group.” While Everytown is not required to disclose its donors, media reports have indicated that Bloomberg provides between a quarter and a third of the organization’s funding.
Everytown supports a wide range of restrictive gun control policies, including prohibitions on high-capacity magazines and so-called assault weapons, mandatory waiting periods for firearm purchases, and the repeal of stand-your-ground self-defense laws, which it calls “shoot first” laws. The group wants strict requirements put in place for concealed carry permits and seeks to ban the open carry of firearms because it claims this practice is being “exploited by white supremacists.” Everytown also wants to repeal the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects the firearms industry from civil liability if somebody else misuses their products—for example, in a crime. Remarkably, Everytown calls it a “myth” that “criminals are responsible for their crimes, not the gun industry.”
Although Bloomberg is a key Everytown funder, the group receives substantial support from other sources. Organizations that reported significant grants to the 501(c)(3) Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund over the two-year period of 2022–2023 include donor-advised fund providers such as the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund ($20,157,872), the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($3,187,068), and the American Online Giving Foundation ($2,545,777), as well as private foundations such as the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust ($2,000,000), the Fidelity Foundation ($2,000,000), and the Crankstart Foundation ($2,000,000).
From 2022 to 2023, the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund reported passing $1,990,000 along to the 501(c)(4) Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, which in turn reported making $13,500,000 in contributions to the Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund PAC over that same two-year period. According to OpenSecrets, 100 percent of the Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund’s outside spending in both the 2022 and 2024 election cycles was earmarked either for Democrats or against Republicans. In April 2025, the Victory Fund announced a $10 million effort to elect Democratic state attorneys general in 2025 and 2026.
In the next installment, Giffords supports dozens of different gun control laws.
