Fox Business is reporting that the embattled National Rifle Association is “pushing back on President Biden’s efforts to rein in gun rights following a series of mass shootings, pledging to spend millions on ‘fighting and educating lawmakers’ in Washington.”
“At least 12 states will be targets for the NRA campaign, but the group told Fox News that they are prepared to spend more, should they need to” the story said.
The NRA effort comes in behind national television blitz campaigns launched in February by the Second Amendment Foundation and in March by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The SAF campaign promoted the organization’s “2nd Amendment First Responder” project, which garnered “overwhelming public response,” according to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb.
That campaign reached millions of viewers via CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, One America News Network, Destination America, Bloomberg, BBC America, the Investigation Discovery Channel, American Heroes Channel, SYFY (Science Fiction), TLC (The Learning Channel), TruTV, DirecTV, The Weather Channel, HLN, Dish TV, CNBC, the Outdoor Channel and Sportsman Channel, according to SAF news release updates.
The CCRKBA effort, which included a radio effort, initially focused on Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s extremist H.R. 127. More recently, CCRKBA began running a second 60-second informational spot alerting the nation’s gun owners about anti-gun Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s newest gun ban legislation, the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2021.”
According to the Fox Business report, NRA will be running “TV and digital ads, mail, outreach and town halls in the coming weeks to counter legislation passed by the House and sitting in the Senate.” Those bills, H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446, focus on background checks.
In a press event, Biden declared gun owners support his proposals, including a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” but the Washington Post Fact Checker called him out on that assertion in a story covered by AmmoLand News.
As noted by Fact Checker Glenn Kessler, alluding to a 2019 survey on gun control, “Among all those surveyed, 56 percent supported a ban and 41 percent opposed it. But among gun-owning households, the assault weapons ban did not receive majority support, with only 43 percent supporting it and 53 percent opposing it. By contrast, in non-gun households, 70 percent supported the ban and 27 percent opposed it…By a margin of 37 percent to 59 percent, gun-owning households also rejected a mandatory buyback of assault weapons.”
NRA has been in the headlines lately because of legal struggles with New York State Attorney General Letitia James. She filed a federal lawsuit last August seeking to dissolve the association. Earlier this year, NRA filed for bankruptcy with a plan to re-incorporate in Texas.
That was made clear in January when NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre stated, “This strategic plan represents a pathway to opportunity, growth and progress. Obviously, an important part of this plan is ‘dumping New York.’ The NRA is pursuing reincorporating in a state that values the contributions of the NRA, celebrates our law-abiding members, and will join us as a partner in upholding constitutional freedom. This is a transformational moment in the history of the NRA.”
