Here’s a great way to reduce overhead and be effective at running a national organization dedicated to infringing on the gun rights of everyday people all at the same time… Have cities hire your people for you so that tax payers cover ¼ of your people’s salary and benefits, pay for most of their operational costs, and finance all of their other resources! It also embeds your people as leaders in city government so that you don’t have to lobby there!
Sounds like another conspiracy theory from the tinfoil hat brigade… Right?
Back in March, while researching the repeal of some anti-gun ordinances, I stumbled across an Orlando City Council agenda item that grabbed my attention. It was, on its surface, just a mundane action item for the annual contract renewal of a city employee. But this city employee’s job title was, well, unique…
“Approving Employment Contract for the Grant-Funded Position of Mayors Against Illegal Guns Regional Coordinator.” City of Orlando Website
The agenda included a budgetary breakdown for how a $75,000 grant from the “United Against Illegal Guns Support Fund” was to be spent.
$60,000 in salary and benefits for the “MAIG Regional Coordinator”
$2,000 for Supplies
$3,000 for “Contractual Services”
10,000 for Travel
Also attached was the Fiscal Impact statement. It showed that this employee’s salary and benefits were expected to cost the city $84,000 for the year. It allocated $24,000 from the city’s “General Fund” to cover the grant’s shortfall.
The employee’s resume was also attached.
Linda S. Vaughn
- Southeast U. S. Regional Director (thirteen states) for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
- Florida Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence
- Lobbyist for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Florida Retail Federation, Early Childhood Association
- She “organized and activated the Floridians Against Workplace Violence Coalition for the sole purpose of defeating” the bill that protects parking lot storage of lawful guns in private vehicles.
- Mayors Against Illegal Guns – Lobbying to close the “gun show loophole” (prohibiting private sales of firearms) and to close the “terror gap” (depriving people of their right to keep and bear arms without due-process by putting them on the no-fly list).
This is also the same Linda S. Vaughn who was busted trying to bait people in to illegal gun transfers in 2004.
She is a long time ant-gun lobbyist in Florida who lives in Tallahassee.
So, Linda S. Vaughn is paid a salary of at least $60,000 per year by the City of Orlando using grant funds provided by the Chicago based Joyce Foundation in collusion with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. She also receives city medical, dental and leave accrual benefits at taxpayer expense. Her authorized pay range tops out at $228,113.60 for this job annually.
Once I put these facts all together, I went in to my closet and put on my wookie suit. Then I took the red pill, locked and loaded, and dove in to the rabbit hole trying to see how far it goes. On Friday I came screaming out of the other end flying at mach 3, pissed off, pissed on, and with my wookie suit in flames.
The tinfoil hat wearing, “the government is in bed with the gun-haters and using my tax dollars to take away my guns”, conspiracy theorists were right. These gun ban lobbyists are being paid with tax money and are operating in government positions all over the country to do the work of the anti-gun groups.
The Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Brady Campaign’s operatives’ work to further gun control is financed on the public dime.
The number of regulatory, enforcement, policy, legislative, and other types of gun ban schemes that these people are involved with is utterly mind-blowing. They’re attempting to use USDOJ operation “Weed and Feed” grant money to do gun buybacks; they’re pushing everything from registration to micro-stamping, outright bans on lawful firearm possession to zero tolerance rules to arrest kids who have toy guns. You name it; they’re doing it to attempt to make all guns illegal; and they’re working for MAIG out of city offices with the authority of city officials on the public dime.
The City of Orlando’s job description for their resident gun ban operative is a sobering look at the anti-gun agenda and lobbying strategy of MAIG.
Some cities have used abbreviated titles and even blatantly deceptive names for these positions which are filled by Bloomberg’s anti-gun rights political operatives. Dept of Health, Injury and Prevention Program, Program Manager; MAIG Coordinator; MAIGC Regional Coordinator; these are just the ones I have found so far. It’s going to take a lot more research to find them all but there is one system that always provides fast results, follow the money. When a city takes the grant money it gets directed to a department and often an individual employment contract.
Complicating matters more is that some of the appointments use nothing but tax dollars. William Morales is a Milwaukee, WI Police officer who was taken off the street and put on a one-year leave of absence so he could be Mayor Barrett’s representative to the Mayors Against Illegal Guns as Regional Coordinator. Paulina DeHaan now holds the job.
These gun control lobbyists have been drawing government paychecks and operating city departments at tax payer expense to take away your right to bear arms for almost a decade. The Joyce Foundation and Bloomberg’s groups have provided millions in funding to the cities that put Bloomberg’s people in place, but they do not pay anything close to the entire bill.
Public statements and press releases about these “MAIG RCs” are noticeably scarce. The one that I did find from a Mayor employing activists on behalf of MAIG is highly deceptive. It completely ignores that fact that the grants only cover about ¾ of the employee’s direct expense to the city and none of the direct or indirect expenses of other city resources used by Bloomberg’s private anti-gun lobbying group.
“Funded by the grant, the regional coordinator who will work out of Mayor Coleman’s office with the full support of the mayor, his staff and the Columbus Department of Public Safety. The coordinator will be charged with advancing common-sense state and local policies to address gun violence in Ohio, facilitate the enforcement of existing gun laws and engage partners among additional mayors, law enforcement, the firearms industry and the faith community.”
…
“I am thrilled that Mayor Coleman and the City of Columbus will host the new Ohio regional coordinator for Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” said New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, coalition co-chair.”
– Columbus Ohio Press Rel. Apr 2010
Even if the Illegal Mayors and the Brady Bunch provided 100% of the funds it would still be private/public collusion of the worst kind. Could you imagine the scathing editorials, cries of corruption, and the lawsuits that would be filed if the City of Orlando were to put Marion Hammer on staff as their NRA Regional Coordinator? How about if they made me the City Coordinator of Florida Carry, Inc. Interoperation?
Florida Carry will be looking closely at everything MAIG’s Linda Vaughn is doing in her position with the City of Orlando. Her work products and materials are subject to Florida Sunshine Laws. We are demanding the disclosure of all documents, emails, records, and other materials related to her work with the City, State, and MAIG. Florida has some of the best firearms preemption laws in the country, any violations of that law by government employees will result in Florida Carry taking appropriate legal action. We also want to determine what work she is doing for private lobbying groups while collecting a city paycheck.
If you are not a member of Florida Carry, please join. At least sign up for our email alerts. There will be an official release from Florida Carry about this situation next week.
Here’s a list of the Brady Bunch/MAIG shills I’ve found working for cities across the US thus far.
Leslie Manning
Coordinator, Mayors Against Illegal Guns
Augusta, ME
Paulina DeHaan
Regional Coordinator Mayors Against Illegal Guns
Milwaukee, WI
Angelo Roefaro
Former MAIG Coordinator
Utica, NY
Left to work for Sen. Schumer
Title Unknown
Minneapolis, MN
Lee Roberts
MAIG Regional Coordinator
Columbus, OH
Title Unknown
Lewiston, ME
Office of Intergovernmental Relations
Seattle, WA
MAIG Regional Coordinator
Reading, PA
Daniel Cronrath
Former MAIG Coordinator
Jacksonville, FL
2003 to 2010 Served under Mayor Peyton (R). Fired when Mayor Brown (D) was elected 2010.
Linda S. Vaughn
MAIG Regional Coordinator
Orlando, FL
This is sickening to read. The Cities that hire these anti-gun “employees/agents” should be sued for misuse of public funds. Tax payers should not be paying a single dollar for these people. Nor should they be allowed to work in a policy making or advisory position for any governmental entity.
“Sounds like another conspiracy theory from the tinfoil hat brigade… Right?”
Hell, no. Just sounds like history repeating itself. This sort of embezzlement by our progressive, collectivist gun-haters has been going on for years.
On October 2, 2000, Massachusetts state senator Cheryl Jacques used (rather. abused) 150 federally-funded “City Year” youth workers to work a rally where she called for more gun control legislation. They not only set up and broke down the stage and exhibits (including the then-trendy display of “empty shoes”), they also made up the bulk of the crowd in order to disguise the low level of public interest in attending her rally.
Jacques deliberately misled City Year administrators into believing the rally was focused on public safety and was not a political rally. When City Year administrators were advised of the political content, they were forced to withhold compensation from youth workers for the time worked at the rally.
So in essence, Jacques got her rally AND got it run by unpaid child/slave labor! Way to deliver social justice for that 99%, Cheryl — nice and stiff, right where the sun don’t shine!
State gun activists demanded criminal charges against Jacques. Yeah, right. Jacques ended up getting a cushy judgeship, and 150 kids (and thousands of gun owners) ended up getting the shaft.
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Sued, hell! Throw the thieving bastards in prison for a few years and see if they don’t come around on that and a few other issues.
Lock one up and see if the others try to keep their jobs, or if they volunteer to quit their jobs and pay back the money they stole, with interest. My guess is not many have the stones to stand and try to defend their acts.
We’ll see, we’ll see.
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It looks like the City of Reading has eliminated the MAIG position.
http://www.readingpa.gov/documents/sp_mt_mins_2112.pdf
But, the replacement positions and staff have been questioned by the local newspaper – the Reading Eagle
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I used to have a message, I spent long minutes composing it, but the BS Recaptcha can’t show me two words that look like anything from a human language. After several tries, my message is gone. Oh well.
In a nutshell: Great idea raking them through the coals. It should be done everywhere.
(My original post was impassioned, erudite, insightful, and now, lost)
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Linked back from my place – and I’ve added you to my list of fellow Florida gun bloggers.
This is just outrageous!
It is time to stop defending our gun rights against organizations like this. It is time to go on the offensive, to attack them as the anti-American fascists they are. And this is the perfect battlefield to use to launch the war.
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When I read this, I began to feel sick and angry. I object. There is no room for public funds being used for this activity.
So what are they coordinating?
We’re going to find out. The public records request have been filed for Orlando and more are pending nationwide. Florida has a very strong public disclosure “Sunshine” law.
Same old song and dance! Our tax dollars should be spent on the least of us but they never are. These people trot out all the current ‘ celeb gun violence victims’ in the hopes that those in the poulation who are so uninformend will rise up! We need more legislation to stop these people and more REAL teeth in the laws we have. Hit them in the pocket book with fines and violations. And take a course for your CCW and carry!
Hello Florida Carry,
Thanks for letting us know about yet another nefarious scheme by those in government who are violating their oaths to ‘support and defend the Constitution.’ Having taken a military oath of service and seen other governmental office oaths, I cannot imagine that the mayoral oath would leave out that critical requirement.
On the action side you might want to contact the following organizations:
The Citizens Committee for the RKBA (http://www.ccrkba.org/)
The Second Amendment Foundation (http:/www.saf.org)
Gun Owners of America (http://gunowners.org/)
The NRA-ILA (http://www.nraila.org/)
RKBA.org (http://rkba.org/)
The WorldNetDaily (http://www.wnd.com/)
And (http://keepandbeararms.com/)
Thanks!
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Intro’d in Milwaukee by noted red Spencer Coggs; signed by Mayor Barrett who wants (for the 2nd time) job as Governor of Wisconsin. This will get to Scott Walker’s campaign, take that to the bank.
Have you checked the Colorado MAIG delegation? There might be a way to sue to stop this if it is going on in Colorado.
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My step-daughter lives in Florida. She had a stalker and the police said that they couldn’t do anything about it until a crime had been committed!! She wasn’t waiting to be raped and/or her throat to be slashed so she did what women in the same position should do. She bought a gun and permit to carry. Plus, she took a good course on gun handling. After that, the stalker backed off but she still feels like he is watching her and she is always on guard. “Go fly a kite, Ms. Vaughn.”
I thought no one was above the law? So how do they get away with this stuff? are the American people that dumb?
I’m not surprised about Daniel Cronrath in Jacksonville, the wonderful John Peyton, Republican mayor, CEO of Gate Gasoline, member of Bloomberg’s MAIG.
DON’T BUY GATE GAS!!
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