May 29, 2013 05:23 PM UTC

The NRA Pays For Dave Kopel, Too

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

FOX 31's Eli Stokols with a late-breaking story today:

Dave Kopel, the Independence Institute’s resident Second Amendment expert, is the lead attorney on the lawsuit.

And FOX31 Denver has found that Kopel has received $1.39 million in grant money from the N.R.A. Civil Rights Defense Fund between 2004 and 2011. The group continues to fund Kopel, although tax information from 2012 and 2013 isn’t yet available…

Kopel has never before acknowledged the N.R.A.’s financial support, not even when testifying earlier this year before Congress and before state lawmakers at the Capitol in Denver.

“I’ve never heard a think tank person testifying before the Congress reveal their organization’s funders,” Kopel said. “We don’t ever disclose anything publicly about our donors other than what the donors themselves disclose.

“Given that they’ve disclosed it, it seems legitimate for me to confirm that. I think every legislative body knows that think tanks are private, charitable organizations that raise money from people who agree with them…”

As we've discussed in this space, Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute attained an undeserved degree of nonpartisan credibility during the recent debate over gun safety legislation, to the extent that he was considered a "winner" by the Denver Post this year even though most of the bills he opposed passed. Far from an "expert resource," Kopel and the Independence Institute developed and purposefully spread misinformation, intending to irrationally anger the gun-owning public about the legislation passed by the General Assembly on guns this year. Much like peeling back the illusion of "grassroots" organizing in the fully-funded recall campaign underway against Senate President John Morse, learning that Kopel is more or less a fully-funded agent of the National Rifle Association is highly instructive–and should change the way everything he touches is reported going forward.

But what this news is not, in any way, is surprising.

Read more here from our own PCG.