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Billionaire Michael Bloomberg's plan to invest $50 million in what he describes as a mom-driven grassroots effort to support pro-gun-safety candidates grabbed headlines Wednesday, and energized gun control activists.

The commitment, the former New York City mayor says, aims to beat back the profound political influence of the National Rifle Association in 15 targeted states — to "make them afraid of us," he told NBC's Today Show.

"This is what the American public wants," Bloomberg said, referring to his group's intended focus on gun-purchase background checks.

Polls show that Bloomberg, 72, is correct — Americans overwhelmingly support background checks for all gun purchases.

But Bloomberg and his ally in this new initiative, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, have so far fallen short of overpowering the NRA, and Bloomberg's critics have argued his efforts aren't worth the money.

Just a year ago, in the wake of the mass shooting at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 children and six adults dead, the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate failed to pass bipartisan gun safety legislation that included expanded background checks. Bloomberg spent millions supporting the legislation, including paying for tough television advertisements.

Since Newtown, a dozen state legislatures have passed stricter gun safety laws, but twice as many have loosened restrictions. Two Colorado legislators who supported that state's new gun control legislation were removed from office in a recall election viewed as a proxy war between the NRA and Bloomberg. (A third legislator facing recall resigned.)

And in the dozen-plus years that have passed since hundreds of thousands of gun safety activists participated in the Million Mom March on Washington in 2000, that mom-centric effort has largely fizzled.

What suggests that Bloomberg, whose Mayors Against Illegal Guns has joined with Moms Demand Action to form the new group, will see a better result?

"Politically, this looks very similar to the past, when there is an impulse for change that falters," says Robert Spitzer, who has written extensively on gun politics, including the 2012 Encyclopedia of Gun Policy and Gun Rights.

The difference now, Spitzer says, is that "there are substantial, high-visibility, well-funded groups that didn't exist previously." Those groups include Bloomberg's and the political action committee created by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband. Giffords was seriously injured in early 2011 in a mass shooting that killed six people.

Her PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, reported raising $2.5 million the first three months of this year, has $7.7 million on hand, and has raised $14.5 million since its creation last year.

Bloomberg insisted Wednesday that he's not undertaking a "battle of dollars" with the NRA, which in the 2012 campaign cycle spent about $20 million. But the claim seemed more than a bit disingenuous.

"That's real money," Spitzer says of Bloomberg's financial commitment and the Giffords' successful PAC.

Jennifer Coffey, national spokeswoman for the pro-gun-rights Second Amendment Sisters organization, says she sees Bloomberg's investment as a waste of money.

"I think he has a very unhealthy fascination with firearms, and how this inanimate object is a threat to everyone in the world," she says. "He lives in a state where people are in food lines with not enough to eat, who are jobless — why doesn't he focus on them? Or on criminals running through his streets, destroying homes, families, businesses?"

Coffey says her major concern with gun-purchase background checks is proposals that would put mental health records on a national database. She predicts that first responders who have sought counseling because of job stresses would be targeted, as would those who have been treated for depression.

"Mental illness is not a crime," Coffey says.

At the California-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, however, executive director Robyn Thomas hailed the mayor's investment — and his potential future contributions — as something that will give state legislators courage to pursue gun safety efforts.

"One of the challenges in getting smart laws even considered has been the NRA's money and influence in the political arena," she said. "This investment and this commitment neutralizes some of that.

"Unlike the Million Mom March, having really organized, effective grassroots efforts in conjunction with the money — that combination has the potential to be incredibly effective."

The grass-roots appeal to women remains a powerful tool, though, political scientist Spitzer says. The focus on women — and mothers in particular — makes demographic sense, he says. Gun control is one of those gender gap issues: Not only do a higher percentage of women support expanding gun safety laws, women also are more likely to believe that gun crime is worse than statistics show.

"In many ways, this is about emotion," Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, said on the Today Show. "We're going to go out and educate moms and women and Americans."

The message, she said: "Gun violence prevention, gun violence prevention, gun violence prevention."

With that mantra, plus money, can Bloomberg be a gun law game changer?

"The jury's out," Spitzer says.

At the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a raft of New Deal programs aimed at giving jobs to millions of unemployed Americans; programs for construction workers and farmers — and programs for writers and artists.

"Paintings and sculpture were produced, murals were produced and literally thousands of prints," says Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

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The "millennial generation" has been getting a bad rap in popular culture in recent years. Millennials, roughly defined as people born in the 1980s and '90s, frequently see themselves depicted as entitled, coddled and narcissistic.

But many — including millennials themselves — dispute those characterizations. Young adults today are tolerant, civic-minded and entrepreneurial, they note, and are thriving despite entering into a tight job market, often with significant amounts of student loan debt.

In an Oxford-style debate for Intelligence Squared U.S., two teams recently faced off over myths, realities and prospects for young adults while considering the motion "Millennials Don't Stand A Chance."

Before the debate, the audience at New York's Kaufman Music Center voted 18 percent in favor of the motion and 47 percent against. After the debate, 38 percent agreed with the motion, while 52 percent disagreed, making the team arguing that "Millennials Don't Have A Chance" the winners of this particular debate.

Those debating were:

More From The Debate

A friend of mine grumbled on Facebook recently about the phenomenon of people moaning in despair over April's weather. There's often a cold snap around this time, she pointed out. There's often unpleasant rain. There's often unpredictability.

It's true, of course. The delicate dance of when to put away the warm clothes and take out the short sleeves must be repeated every year, and then re-repeated in reverse the first time you go outside in early September and feel that the air has become slightly less hospitable than it was yesterday. It's true that we shouldn't act surprised. It's true that we should look at our calendars, nod sagely, and say, "Right on time."

But somehow, we manage to summon every April the impatience and restlessness that can only mean one thing: we are lusting for spring in our hearts.

It really is remarkable, though. It should be old by now, but it isn't. It's amazing. I literally allow myself to be amazed by the effect of the earth going around the sun. It happened again! I think. My part of the globe is once again getting more direct sunlight more of the time! It's as if I feared maybe it wouldn't. Maybe this would be the year that we chugged to a stop and it stayed January forever. Or worse, February. I should, in theory, be no more impressed by the arrival of spring than by the arrival of morning. I happen to have a huge window through which I can watch the sun come up, and I often do at certain times of year. But I don't have feelings about it.

I have feelings about spring. Every spring, I look forward to that first day that I can drive with the window down, even though I've been driving with the window down since I was a little girl. (I recommend accompanying this trip with the New Pornographers' record Mass Romantic.) Every spring, there's that one day. That one day, when you turn the corner. You hit the farmer's market in a shirt you've washed and dried a hundred times until it's fuzzy and pilling. The tables are crammed with berries that are a little early but they are there, and you ease past somebody slathering sunblock on a kid in a stroller. You take your berries home, but you eat several of them in the car on the way there, because hey – they're grown without pesticides, right?

It's true: We shouldn't grouse about the way winter hangs around. (Even though, in many places, this winter was worse than most.) We should be used to it. It starts to get better, and then it rains, it gets cold again, and we feel suspended and impatient, snapped back and forth between cold and warm. But all that angst is just part of the dance. We talk about the bad weather in part because it preserves that feeling of that one day. It's going to happen soon here.

I sing "Spring, Spring, Spring" from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers to myself at least once every year. Just because. (Well, just because it's pegged to spring, while the other major kicky musical number about animals mating seasonally is specifically pegged to June, and I can never wait that long.)