When Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health recently unveiled the 2025 National Survey of Gun Policy, the headlines were predictable: Americans supposedly back stricter storage rules, licensing requirements and red-flag laws. But behind the numbers lies a familiar story: one of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s money, political agendas dressed up as “science” and a survey designed to produce the outcome its sponsors already wanted.
The Center for Gun Violence Solutions, created in 2022 through Bloomberg’s partnership with Johns Hopkins, makes no secret of its mission.
“We will now have even more capacity to bring meaningful policy change through evidence-based advocacy,” its co-director, Daniel Webster, declared upon launch.
That language reveals the real goal. This is not neutral scholarship. It is advocacy research with a built-in destination: more restrictions on the Second Amendment.
Bloomberg’s fingerprints are everywhere, and he has been involved with Johns Hopkins for decades, pumping in billions over the years with the school renaming its School of Hygiene and Public Health after him all the way back in 2001.
The former New York City mayor and failed presidential candidate also funds Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the anti-gun media outlet The Trace, a group that feeds “collaborative” stories to mainstream newsrooms. Now his dollars shape a university program that claims to speak in the voice of science but echoes the talking points of his political crusade.
The Survey’s Tilted Playing Field
According to Johns Hopkins, the survey drew responses from nearly 3,000 Americans. But the composition reveals its bias: almost twice as many non-gun owners as gun owners, and almost 500 more Democrats than Republicans. That imbalance practically guaranteed a stronger appetite for regulation.
From that skewed pool came sweeping claims. Seventy-four percent said they supported laws requiring firearms in the home to be locked when not in use. Seventy-two percent endorsed “permit-to-purchase” laws that would force would-be buyers through a gauntlet of licensing, fingerprinting, redundant background checks and mandatory training. Seventy-seven percent favored red-flag laws, described by the center as temporary and due process protected.
Yet history—and the Constitution—tells a different story.
In the Heller (2008) decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down mandatory storage requirements that rendered firearms useless for immediate self-defense. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion left no ambiguity: a law that prevents a law-abiding citizen from defending themselves in their own home violates the Second Amendment. Safe storage remains a responsibility for every gun owner, but when the government dictates terms that neutralize the right itself, the line is crossed.
Strip away the academic language, and the Hopkins survey reads less like objective research and more like a press release for the gun-control lobby. The sample was weighted to amplify sympathetic voices. The questions were framed in ways that talk away constitutional concerns.
This advocacy hiding as science should not surprise anyone who follows the money. Michael Bloomberg has spent more than a billion dollars promoting gun-control nationwide. Now, by investing in Johns Hopkins, he has secured the credibility of a world-class university to advance the same agenda under the banner of “public health.”
In the end, polls and surveys cannot override rights enshrined in the U.S. Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment does not bend to opinion research—especially when that research is funded and framed by activists with a predetermined mission. The Bloomberg-Johns Hopkins partnership may deliver glossy charts and statistics, but any with common sense knows you get the results you pay for.
And in this case, the check has Bloomberg’s name on it.
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