I was curious about the discrepancy, and Open Secrets doesn't really report its methodology well here. I did some digging and found that it's the amount of money that is spent on lobbying federal officials, not a number inclusive of all kinds of political expenditures.

It does seem a bit motivated to choose federal lobbying as the initial representation of spending around the gun issue, when it's clearly dwarfed by initiative campaign expenditures, donations to individual candidates, and electoral campaign expenditures.

Thank you for investigating that. I can't edit my above comment anymore or I'd include that. Although I think the broader point, that anyone can make the spending numbers look a certain way, is still valid.

> Open secrets is an obviously biased source that believes there should be more gun control.

Do you have a source for this claim? They're listed as a nonpartisan organization online[1], and it seems as though their founders were a pair of Democratic and Republican senators. Their current lead project appears to be tracing the Biden administration's money, which doesn't feel like towing the line to me.

Edit: I found this conservative source[2], which refers to them as performing "left-wing" campaign finance advocacy. I think they're referring to the Citizens United decision, which has been a rallying point for every government watchdog that I know of. It occurs to me that (1) you could label just about anything as "left-wing" in this manner, and (2) campaign finance reform isn't something that most self-identified leftists would consider "left-wing" (being firmly in the "make government more transparent" category of political activity).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Responsive_Politics

[2]: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/center-for-respons...

You can just read the page linked in the GP about gun spending. It's exceedingly obvious that they have a strong viewpoint on the issue.

"They have a strong viewpoint" is a not the same thing as "obviously biased." Conflating them is a rhetorical sleight of hand.

When I go to that page, I get a few grafs on recent mass shootings (which, barring conspiracy theories, everybody is presumably on board with having happened). Mentioning those at all indicates that they have a viewpoint, but I don't see anything that indicates that it biases their transparency work. There's nothing to justify the insinuation.

The examples gave about their data being incomplete, combined with the text on their page, paints a strong picture of bias.