Glad to hear:
After a 15-hour filibuster in the Senate and a 25-hour sit-in in the House will likely fail to produce meaningful gun reform after the Orlando shooting, gun control advocates are looking ahead to their next battle: the November election.
Specifically, Everytown for Gun Safety — a group that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg helped form to match the National Rifle Association’s political influence — has set its sights and its resources on six key senators who have been resistant to what they call commonsense gun safety legislation. Press Secretary Lizzie Ulmer told ThinkProgress the group with be targeting three vulnerable members of Congress up for reelection this year — Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).
“These are people who have consistently blocked efforts to close loopholes in our laws that keep guns in the hands of dangerous people or they have tried to tout a record that they supported background checks on all guns, when they haven’t,” Ulmer said.
The group has already begun its spending against Ayotte, considered one of the most vulnerable senators up for reelection this fall. On Wednesday, it ran a full page ad in the state’s Union Leaderin addition to taking over the ads on the homepage of the newspaper’s website.
“If you look at Kelly Ayotte, she is going to try to claim that she did support background checks on all gun sales, but she supported the decoy legislation that is supported by the NRA,” Ulmer said. “These people consistently have the opportunity to do the right thing, and they do not.”
Ulmer said Everytown may be running a similar ad campaign against Rubio, who recently announced he’ll be running for reelection in Florida. Rubio has claimed that the Orlando shooting partly inspired him to stay in the Senate, but he voted this month against measures to expand background checks and prevent people on the terror watch list from purchasing firearms.
This is good news but we can’t wait for Bloomberg’s group, we have to get ready now. Click below to donate and get involved with these Democrats’ campaigns:
Maggie Hassan (D. NH)
Russ Feingold (D. WI)
Patrick Murphy (D. FL)
Alan Grayson (D. FL)