A new gun rights group is launching a six-figure ad buy in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, targeting the many Americans who acquired firearms during and after the COVID pandemic, Axios reports. The NRA, the longtime premier gun-rights group in the U.S., cut its political spending from $54 million in 2016 to $29 million in 2020, according to OpenSecrets data. It has reserved $1.3 million in ad spending in 2024, according to AdImpact. The Secure Our Freedom Alliance, a 501(c)4 organization, isn't looking to compete with existing firearm groups but wants to fill what it sees as an urgent need to address gun owners this election cycle. By some estimates, post-pandemic, there are some 22 million new gun owners. The goal is to convince new gun owners, especially women and minorities, that their rights are under attack by the Biden administration and progressive politicians.
Between now and November, the NRA will be targeting key states to reelect President Trump and stop Kamala Harris from taking her "radical gun confiscation agenda to the Oval Office," said the NRA's Doug Hamlin. "We will be engaging with our millions of members and gun owners to elect pro-freedom candidates up and down the ballot," he said. The ads by the new group are directed at younger voters, as well as women and minority gun owners, with an emphasis on self-defense. "Our neighborhood, it's not so good," says a mother in one 30-second commercial, as she's tucking her daughter into bed. "She is my responsibility and I will protect her," she says, locking away a handgun on her nightstand. Another ad shows a young woman at the shooting range with her father. She then holsters her pistol and heads out on a run by herself. "We are going to make the case to the American public that he [Biden] is wrong, anti-gun liberals are wrong, and that the right to self-defense is fundamental to every law-abiding American," said Chris Cox, a senior adviser to the new group and the NRA's former political director.
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