The nation’s leading gun-control groups have announced more than $15 million in election spending over the past week.
Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords have released plans for a slew of new campaigns across multiple states and races during the past seven days. The former announced a combined $13 million in new spending, while the latter began $2.2 million worth of new efforts. In contrast, the National Rifle Association told The Reload it has begun a new “seven-figure ad buy” in Pennsylvania and Georgia as part of an ongoing multi-million dollar campaign to back Former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The gun-control groups are instead focusing on down-ballot races across key battleground states. The Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund and Senate Majority PAC are partnering on a $4 million campaign against Republican Senate candidates in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Giffords PAC said it will spend $1 million in ads against Nebraska Congressman Dan Bacon (R.) and $1.2 million against Arizona Congressman Juan Ciscomani (R.). The rest of the spending is targeted at state and local elections.
Everytown said it plans to pump $9 million into Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania state legislative elections. It said more than $6.5 million of that would go to Michigan, while another $1.6 million is headed to Arizona. The group also announced a “six-figure paid media campaign” on the school board elections in Miami-Dade County in Florida and Cobb County in Georgia, as well as a television ad campaign in the North Carolina Attorney General race that didn’t have a monetary figure attached.
The announcements represent the gun-control groups putting their fundraising advantage to work as election day nears. They have been outraising the NRA all year and have committed to spending tens of millions before the end of the race. The new ad campaigns also show the gun-control groups turning that cash advantage into a much broader campaign to boost their favored candidates well beyond the top-of-ticket races.
Unlike 2020, when Everytown initially committed to spending $50 million but fell well short of that goal, the gun-control groups appear to be delivering on their promises to spend big in 2024. Meanwhile, the NRA’s long-running ability to outraise and outspend them appears to be at an end. A half-decade-long corruption scandal, which it still hasn’t fully resolved, has decimated the group’s membership and fundraising capacity. It has even stumbled into a new leadership scandal–this one involving gruesome animal cruelty accusations–under the CEO the NRA board appointed to reform the group after Wayne LaPierre left in disgrace.
The NRA’s latest scandal even seems to have undercut the tactic it has turned to during its money struggles: campaign events. On Thursday, the group canceled the Georgia event Trump was meant to headline next week. It would have been their third time hosting the former president in 2024 alone.
The new ads from the NRA and Giffords stuck to guns.
“On the Second Amendment and your rights, Confiscation Kamala has been Crystal clear,” the NRA ad goes. “Her gun-control agenda comes straight from that petri dish of bad ideas that is California. She can claim to be a gun owner all she wants, but we all know she’s the same anti-gun California radical she’s always been.”
“It’s terrifying that Congressman Bacon’s on the side of the corporate gun lobby,” the first Giffords ad says.
“When Ciscomani opposes background checks–allowing criminals to buy guns–that’s an extreme position that puts ALL our families at risk,” the second Giffords ad says.
However, the Everytown ads follow a long-running trend of coupling the group’s gun message with others–most notably abortion.
“Mike Rogers wants to rip away abortion rights, and in Congress he sponsored four bills to ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or to save a woman’s life,” the group’s Michigan goes. “And Rogers voted against common sense gun safety laws again and again, opposing background checks and making it easier for violent criminals to get guns.”
“You’ve heard a lot about Dave McCormick, so here’s three things to remember,” Everytown’s Pennsylvania ad said. “One: Dave McCormick opposes abortion rights. Two: He said he was fully against abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Three: McCormick is against any gun safety law — even those that keep guns away from violent criminals.”
With less than a month before election day in a race with few undecideds and voters generally putting gun policy lower on their list of priorities, the efforts from either side are facing an uphill battle to persuade a sizeable chunk of the voting public. But, with polls indicating the race could once again come down to just a few thousand votes and voters still rating guns as very important to their decision, the voters each side is able to reach could well decide the outcome.
