guns

PCCC is already launching full-page newspaper ads targeting the four Democratic “no” votes: Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.).

“Today, the Senate voted against the 91% of Americans who support background checks to stop gun violence. We’ll be holding accountable Democrats who voted against their constituents by running ads in their states, featuring some of the 23,000 gun owners who have joined our campaign for common sense gun reform,” said Stephanie Taylor, PCCC co-founder, in a statement.

In the hours leading up to the U.S. Senate’s vote to on a bill calling for universal background checks for gun purchases, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee held a conversation with concerned Montanans urging Sen. Max Baucus to back the legislation.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, warned that Democrats who vote against the assault weapons ban could depress liberal turnout in the 2014 midterm election. “With guns, it will be a major election issue for Democrats. Opposing strong gun laws could mean depressing their base, which in the off year would be a very bad idea,” Green said. He said if any Democratic primary challengers emerge, votes against gun laws could become lines of attack.“If there is a credible primary challenger, a vote against strong gun laws would absolutely hurt an incumbent Democrat,” he said.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (D)

There are signs that Congress may be backing off support for a renewed assault weapons ban, and even a proposal to require universal background checks for gun purchases may be in peril.

But out West, one state is taking the lead, not waiting for Congress to act. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) today signed into law legislation that will expand background checks and limit the size of ammunition magazines. As Salon’s David Sirota points out, Hickenlooper was at firstAi??hesitantAi??to embrace reform, but polling showed that it was popular and he was eventually pushed by activists to help pass it.

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Video available here: http://on.aol.com/video/pccc-assault-weapons-ad-targets-mitch-mcconnell-517683712

Ahead of a Senate hearing this week on the proposed assault weapons ban, a liberal group is attacking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with a new TV ad featuring a Kentucky gun owner. The ad is the second by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which now has pumped $100,000 on TV and online to criticize the Senate’s top Republican in his home state — well ahead of his 2014 re-election campaign.

A liberal group is launching its second ad attacking the Senate’s top Republican over gun control in the past month. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s spot features a Kentucky gun owner criticizing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for opposing an assault weapons ban.

This morning, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee released a second video challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on his deference to the NRA and opposition to gun reforms.

In the ad, Gary Nutt, a military veteran and hunter, says that he would be a “pretty bad hunter” if he needed an assault weapon to hunt, and notes that McConnell has taken $198,615 from the gun industry during his campaigns.

Watch it:

Click here to pitch in a few dollars to help run this ad in Kentucky.

A liberal group is again challenging U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s position on gun control in a commercial that began running Monday in Kentucky and Washington in advance of the Senate’s next hearing on guns.

The group Progressive Change Campaign Committee is spending $100,000 to run the ad for at least a week. It began airing Monday in Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green and Paducah markets plus Washington, D.C., as the Senate’s Judiciary Committee prepares for a hearing Wednesday on the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.”

It features Edmonson County resident Gary Nutt telling viewers that, as a hunter, he doesn’t see the point of owning semi-automatic assault weapons that can fire dozens of rounds quickly without needing a reload.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the wrong side of an assault weapons ban, a progressive group argues Monday in a new attack ad released in the congressman’s home state of Kentucky… The ad hits out at McConnell, up for re-election in 2014, for taking money from the gun industry. The ad debuts ahead of a Senate hearing this week on an assault weapons ban—something President Barack Obama’s administration wants after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The committee believes McConnell’s opposition to a ban could lead to loss of votes for him this year… The ad is set to run on broadcast and cable in Lexington, Louisville, Bowling Green and rural Paducah markets and has an initial buy of $25,000, according to the committee. Monday’s ad brings the total spent by the PCCC on McConnell to $100,000.

A satellite image of Hurricane Sandy

As part of his push to stop gun reforms, NRA president Wayne LaPierre wrote last week that looters “ran wild in South Brooklyn” after Hurricane Sandy and that people needed guns to defend themselves. “And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all,” he warned.

But there was a problem with LaPierre’s scare-mongering: it wasn’t based in reality. As figures from the New York Police Department showed, crime actually fell by 25 percent after Sandy struck. There was a small spike in burglaries — meaning home invasions with home owners present — but rapes, murders, robberies, assaults, and all other deadly crimes fell after the storm.

In an interview with the local media, freshman congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who represents a district in Brooklyn, scolded LaPierre for his inaccurate remarks:

JEFFRIES: Comments made by are not constructive, they’re destructive. They’re factually inaccurate, they demean the entire community of South Brooklyn. And we need to get back to a constructive conversation about how to turn things around as they relate to the gun issue in America.

Watch it:

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President Obama has proposed a universal background check system that would close loopholes and require criminal background checks for all gun purchases.

This proposal is very popular, with 92 percent of Americans supporting it. But how well would it actually work?

Virginia provides a test case. Here’s a report from the local media about how many guns have been stopped from going into the wrong hands thanks to background checks:

Virginia’s background check system has prevented more than 16,000 felons from buying guns since it began in 1989, according to state police records.

The records show a total 54,260 transactions have been denied during the past 24 years. The total also includes drug abusers, the mentally ill and domestic assault offenders.

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Ai??

A Quinnipac University poll released last week finds that 92 percent of Americans support President Obama’s proposal for universal background checks for gun purchases (seven percent oppose). Yet most Republican lawmakers in Congress have yet to voice support for such a policy, and continue to side with the fringe of American public opinion.

Opposition to background checks is represents such a small portion of Americans that there are actually more Americans who believe that Elvis is alive — eight percent of respondents to a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll thought that the King of Rock n’Roll may be living it up somewhere.

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State Senator Bill Jackson (R)

Yesterday, Georgia state senator Bill Jackson (R) addressed his colleagues by attacking sensible gun regulations. During the climax of his speech, Jackson implied that frying pans and hammers are as dangerous or more dangerous than guns:

JACKSON: In the meantime, the gentleman from the 22nd, my colleague he’s worried about guns, and you know insinuating guns. They killin’ people with frying pans. They killing people with hammers. There’s more murders with hammers last years than there was shotguns, pistols, and ak-47’s. Let’s help the people that need the help. That’s the end of this story. Thank you very much.

Watch video of Jackson provided by Better Georgia:

For the record, 496 people were killed by hammers and clubs in 2011. There were 9,146 firearm deaths.

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After the tragedy at Sandy Hook, special interest lobbyists for the NRA and the gun industry are actually trying to expand the number of guns out on the streets. In Arkansas, they actually succeeded in lifting the ban on guns in church.

But in other communities, citizens are fighting the NRA and winning. In Wyoming, the House passed an NRA-backed bill to allow guns on college campuses.

But educators, led by University of Wyoming PresidentAi??Tom Buchanan, got involved. “Our colleges and universities have to be safe and secure sanctuaries for learning,” he told the press, rallying educators to testify against the bill and petition their lawmakers. “Weapons on campus or in the classroom would have a chilling and unacceptable impact on education.”

Following the educator outrage, the Senate Education Committee chose to take no action on the bill, effectively killing it.

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The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is behind the ad, and they released some polling earlier this week as well, showing that 82 percent of Kentuckians favor criminal background checks for gun owners (versus 13 opposed) and 50 percent favored an assault weapons ban (versus 42 opposed). It was conducted by Public Policy polling, rated by Fordham University as the most accurate pollster in 2012.
Now, in more PPP polling results released first to The Nation, we see that hitting McConnell for his gun industry backing is indeed fertile territory in Kentucky.

Is church really the place for your firearm?

On Monday, the Arkansas legislature, rather than enacting common sense gun reforms, decided to legalize guns in churches by passing a bill to do so. Democratic Governor Mike Beebe is expected shortly to sign the bill.

Protesting this new law, Rev. Scott Walters, pastor of Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Little Rock, wrote to his local paper:

The legislature’s action has already impacted our ministry at Christ Church. It’s given us one more hurdle, one more fear to deal with as we try to do our Christian duty and welcome a stranger into our midst as if he or she were Christ himself. Its impact is not hypothetical. It is real. Loving our neighbor just got a little harder.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is feeling the heat after the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) released a new ad featuring a Kentucky gun owner calling him out for taking money from gun manufacturers and opposing reforms. Watch it:

In response to the ad, McConnell releasedAi??a document ignoring the actual issues at hand and instead attacking the PCCC. McConnell’s response leads with the false statement that we only have one donor from Kentucky. The money in politics watchdog Public Campaign debunks this claim in an email roundup, pointing out we actually have 2,000 times as many donors from Kentucky, but that they are small donors — the sort McConnell is unfamiliar with:

The McConnell camp fired back crowing that only one Kentuckian gave PCCC over $200, apparently forgetting that unitemized, small donors count. PCCC says 2,000 Kentuckians contributed under $200. Kentuckyai??i??s LEO Weekly reports that McConnell might have forgotten that donors at this size exist after spending the past three months criss-crossing the country for big money fundraisers from Beverly Hills and Chicago to the December 17 D.C. fundraiser for Amgen just days before McConnell negotiated the fiscal cliff deal that included a $500 million giveaway to the company. Only one percent of McConnellai??i??s contributions were under $200 in the past three months.

The LEO Weekly, a local outlet that Public Campaign cites above, took McConnell to task, pointing out that he has very few small donors himself and that more than twice as many of his itemized contributions come from out of state:

McConnellai??i??s campaign cited a federal database that only compiles donations over $200, but PCCC would subsequently point out that they actually have raised over 2,000 contributions from their 7,000 members in Kentucky, averaging less than $15 …

A group whose aim is to elect progressive Democrats to Congress released an ad Tuesday hitting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for opposing gun control legislation while receiving campaign donations from gun manufacturers. The spot, from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, will run on broadcast and cable television in McConnell’s home state, as well as in Washington, D.C., including on CNN.

Republican Mitch McConnell knows that as Republican Senate Minority Leader and a symbol of the party establishment, he’s the target of conservatives, tea partyers and others on the right… But now some progressives have him in their sights, believing the Kentucky Republican’s opposition to gun reform offer Democrats a foothold in McConnell’s 2014 re-election race.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee on Tuesday launched an ad campaign against McConnell over his gun stance.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee released an ad Tuesday pressuring Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on gun control. “I was born and raised right here in Kentucky. I served my country as a marksman and we were trained to use guns safely. It’s unthinkable that guns meant for war could be used on civilians and children,” says Rodney Kendrick, a Kentucky gun owner, in the ad.

The NRA’s president David Keene recorded an interview with the conservative news site The Daily Caller that it will be releasing in full today. In an excerpt, Keene compared the weapon used in the Sandy Hook massacre to the musket:

KEENE: This nation was founded as a result of the fact, people, citizens who had a musket above their fireplace grabbed the gun when an emergency confronted them. For four million Americans, the AR-15 is the musket of today.

Click here to watch it.

For reference, the AR-15 can fire between 700 to 950 rounds a minute. In contrast, the muskets that the American revolutionaries used typically fired three rounds per minute if they were used by skilled marksmen.

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An AR-15

Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) released a new report today looking at mass shootings in the United States since 2009.

Highlighting the importance of looking at new gun regulations, the report finds that 28% of mass shootings since 2009 involved either high-capacity magazines or assault weapons. The report also notes that 9% of these mass shootingsAi??occurredAi??in schools (either primary, secondary, or college campuses).

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Many Republicans in Congress have sought to avoid enacting common-sense reforms to gun policy, instead choosing to buckle to the NRA and its gun manufacturer backers. On MSNBC today, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) dismissed universal background checks, saying that he thinks video games are “a bigger problem” than guns because they “affect people”:

CHUCK TODD: Can you envision a way of supporting the universal background checks bill?

LAMAR ALEXANDER: Chuck, I’m going to wait and see on all these bills. I think video games is a bigger problems than guns, because video games affect people.

Watch it:

For the record, violent video games are very popular overseas as well. In the United Kingdom, the Call of Duty series was the top-selling game last year. But their gun murder rate is extremely low, with only 39 such killings in 2009.

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The NRA has been claiming that it supports tougher background checks, a claim that the media has been uncritically reporting — even as the organization killed a series of background check bills in Virginia.

But on Twitter late last night, the NRA made clear that it does not support Obama’s universal background check proposal:

By taking this extreme position, the NRA disagrees with 92 percent of Americans, who said in a CBS/New York Times poll that they support universal background checks. Tellingly, in its much-touted poll of its members, the NRA did not ask them if they support this proposal.

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