On Tuesday the country’s largest gun rights group weighed in via multimedia on Bloomberg-backed voter referendums in two different states.
In the above broadside, focusing on Maine’s Question 3, entitled “Don’t Let New Yorkers Control Your Maine Gun Rights!” a Downeast Maine accented narrator seemingly fresh off the lobstah boat focuses on the $3 million spend by Bloomberg on the fight to get the background check push on the ballot, complete with an example where loaning a gun to a relative may incur a NICS check at a local dealer. Which it may, depending on how long the loan is and for what purpose, despite what the former Brady Campaign staffer at Media Matters contends.
One faux pas: the skyline used may be part San Fransisco/part NYC as reported by the New York Daily News.
In the NRA’s defense, Bloomberg surrogate Mainers for Responsible Gun Ownership dropped their first ad last week, and it had terrible gun safety. Like really bad gun safety.
Also, neither Media Matters nor the Daily News challenged the primary point of the NRA’s ad: that the money coming into the state for Q3 is from Bloomberg groups. Even if the accent is kinda pandering and the graphics are geographically mashed up.
But hey, gun control groups often are guilty of the same sort of misfire on ads. Last year, Moms Demand Action blitzed Mississippi with ads against constitutional carry complete with Southern drawl and banjo music in the background (check it here) while showing drone imagery of swampland that may have actually come from Louisiana.
Elsewhere in the country, the NRA also released a new ad in Nevada on Question 1, “Stand with law enforcement. Vote No on Nevada Question 1!” featuring a number of sheriffs in the state speaking against the ballot measure. It is the latest such installment in each side enlisting law enforcement spokesmen, with Bloomberg-funded Nevadans for Background Checks dropping their first ad two weeks ago featuring Jim Dunlap, President of the Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers.
In a rebuttal quickly issued by Nevadans for Background Checks to the ad, they kind of make the NRA’s point.
Fact Check: Question 1 includes broad family exceptions and was written with common shooting practices in mind.
Under Question 1, no one is going to jail if they follow the law. If your cousin wants to borrow your gun and you go shooting together, then there’s no need for a background check. If your cousin wants to borrow your gun to go shooting or hunting without you, then you simply meet at a licensed dealer for a 90-second background check.
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