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Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political group that typically supports Democrats, spent $50,000 to air a TV ad in Montana and Washington asking Baucus to reconsider his position on background checks. “Now that you’re retiring, please put Montana first,” a woman says at the close of the spot. That group touted Baucus’ statement Thursday as “huge,” though the senator makes clear that he would reconsider his position “based on the feedback he gathers from the people of Montana.” Progressive Change has also spent $100,000 on full-page ads in the hometown newspapers of Democrats Baucus, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. Begich and Pryor are running in 2014.

Despite overwhelming support by the public, expanded background checks for gun purchases went down during their first vote in the U.S. Senate. The proposal has also been defeated in a number of state legislatures. Most blame the power of the gun lobby, represented by the National Rifle Association.

A group of activists in Washington state — where the proposal died in the legislature — plans to bypass lawmakers altogether by putting the proposal on the ballot. TheAi??Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility will today launch a drive to get 300,000 signatures to place universal background checks for gun purchases on the ballot in November 2014. Watch a local news report on the ballot drive:

Last week’s defeat of expanded background checks served as a reminder of special interest influence in Congress, and as we noted, Senators who voted against background checks received 8 times as much money from the gun lobby.

Here’s another piece of the puzzle as to why background checks went down. The Center for Public Integrity notes that the National Rifle Association spent a huge amount lobbying Congress in the first quarter of 2012, spending “at least $800,000 lobbying the federal government during theAi??first quarter ai??i?? moreAi??than any year covering theAi??same period, according to federal records..”

We’re running newspaper ads in the states of the four Senate Democrats who helped kill expanded background checks. Click here to pitch in $3 to run them.

A liberal group on Friday took aim at Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, launching the first in a series of ads targeting Democratic senators who voted against expanded background checks on gun purchases.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is running full-page ads in seven newspapers throughout Montana. The ad includes the signatures of 75 gun owners across Montana who are protesting Baucus’ vote.

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.

Democratic Senate candidate U.S. Rep. Edward Markey reached out to progressive activists around the country on Thursday, doing a 45-minute phone call with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee… [He] touted his history favoring public financing of campaigns, advocating for net neutrality, opposing the Defense of Marriage Act and supporting a public option in health insurance, and eventually a single payer system.

A child soldier with the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). (Photo credit: Mount Holyoke University)

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the chief gun industry lobby in the United States, doesn’t just want to stop gun reform here — it is also working to keep guns in the hands of warlords and those who deploy child soldiers abroad by attacking the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and making sure the U.S. doesn’t join it.

Watch a recent Al Jazeera English documentary about the Arms Trade Treaty and the effort by 150 countries to regulate the flow of arms into conflict zones:

Last Friday, the Senate voted 53-46 for an amendment by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to prevent the Obama administration from joining the ATT. Every single Senate Republican voted in favor, and seven Democratic Senators joined them.

These Senators all offered their own arguments and reasons for voting against the ATT, but the money they received from the NRA speaks for itself. Ai??The Senators who voted against the treaty received $69,499 from the NRA. When you add in funding from the further-right “Gun Owners Of America,” that number jumps up to $78,543. Ai??But that just includes direct contributions to campaigns. If you add in the amounts the gun lobby spent on independent expenditures — outside ad-buys in support of one of these Senators — the number jumps up to a whopping $225,377 this election cycle alone.

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Colorado’s state flag

Colorado is not waiting for Congress to act on gun reforms. Over the weekend, a spree of gun reform bills advanced through the legislature, winning approval in the Senate:

A ban on guns for individuals guilty of domestic abuse
Universal background checks including for private purchases
A limit on magazine sizes that limits them to 15 rounds
A ban on online concealed carry certification

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

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:

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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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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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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.

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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Yesterday, the Senate held its first hearing on gun reforms. At the hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked NRA president Wayne LaPierre if he really thinks the second amendment’s purpose is for citizens to arm themselves against the government. LaPierre responded that this was the purpose of the amendment, and also for citizens to protect themselves absent of the government. Baltimore Police Chief James Johnson called this view of gun rights “scary, creepy, and not based on logic”:

DURBIN: Your NRA members say, you just don’t get it. It’s not just about hunting, it’s not just about sports, it’s not just about shooting targets, it’s not just about defending ourselves from criminals, as Ms. Trotter testified. We need the firepower and the ability to protect ourselves from our government, from our government. From the police, if they knock on our doors we need to fight back. Do you agree with that point of view?

LAPIERRE: Senator, I think without any doubt if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George, and they wanted to make sure these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny. I also think though that what people all over the country fear today is being abandoned by their government if a tornado hits, if a hurricane hits, if a riot occurs, that they’re going to be out there alone and the only way they’re going to protect themselves in the cold in the dark when they’re vulnerable is with a firearm. And I think that indicates how relevant and how essential the second amendment is in today’s society to fundamental human survival.

DURBIN: Well, Chief Johnson, you heard it, the belief …

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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The NRA likes to claim that it represents gun owners. But the truth is, it represents extreme positions more likely held by gun manufacturers than America’s responsible gun-owning families.

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, one group of responsible gun owners is taking a stand against the NRA. The Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show, in the wake of the tragic events at Sandy Hook, decided not to feature certain weapons at the event, including assault rifles.

This is their statement on their move:

As a hunting-focused event, we welcome exhibitors who wish to showcase products and firearms that serve the traditional needs of the sport. Clearly, we strongly support the 2nd Amendment. However, this year we have made the decision not to include certain products that in the current climate may attract negative attention that would distract from the strong focus on hunting and fishing at this family-oriented event and possibly disrupt the broader positive experience of our guests.

This set off an angry reaction by the NRA, which decided to pull out of the event altogether.

This move by this hunting show against the NRA could be the start of a movement, where responsible gun owners and hunters stand up to the group’s extreme views.

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Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT)

Blue Dog Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) has been a long-time favorite of the National Rifle Association. In his last election, he got an “A” rating from the group and scored an endorsement — something he was so proud about that his campaign put out a press release touting it.

Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook, Matheson has refused to talk about gun reforms and recently dismissed many of Obama’s proposed measures.

But while he is against common sense reforms on gun policies, he instead introduced a bill about violent video games. The bill would decree that:

It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or rent, or attempt to sell or rentai??i?? (1) any video game containing a content rating of ai???Adults Onlyai??? (as determined by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board) to any person under the age of 18; or (2) any video game containing a content rating of ai???Matureai??? (as determined by such Board) to any person under the age of 17.

Not only is Matheson avoiding the main issues relating to gun violence, but his bill is unconstitutional. In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down a nearly-identical law in California.

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Following President Obama’s push for tougher gun regulations, the National Rifle Association (NRA) claimed that it supported the spirit of one of his proposals: expanding background checks for gun buyers.

The press widely reported this NRA stance:

CBS: NRA President: Group supporting of tighter background checks (1/17/2013)
Associated Press: NRA chief says group accepts background checks (1/17/2013)
The Hill: NRA chief “generally supportive” of strong background checks (1/17/2013)

But shockingly, at the very same time the NRA was claiming to support tougher background checks, it helped oppose and kill several Virginia bills introduced to enact such a policy. Here’s an excerpt from an email the NRA sent to its members in Virginia over the weekend, bragging about killing the background check bills last week:

Senate Bill 1136,Ai??Senate Bill 1232Ai??andAi??Senate Bill 1281Ai??would require a background check on all private firearm transfers, including between family members.Ai??Ai??The NRA opposes SB 1136, SB 1232 and SB 1281, and all three Senate bills were defeated.
Senate Bill 911Ai??andAi??Senate Bill 1001Ai??would require a background check on all private firearm transfers at a gun show.Ai?? Under current law, only licensed dealers must obtain such a check.Ai?? SB 911 was rolled into SB 1001.Ai??Ai??Consideration on SB 1001, opposed by the NRA, was passed over for the day and may be heard on Monday, January 21 at 8:00 a.m.

The NRA appears to be saying one thing and doing another.

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The National Rifle Association (NRA), the main gun lobby, has refused to consider any common sense gun reforms following several mass shootings. It has instead chosen to be the primary group working to block reforms.

But the NRA wasn’t always so extreme. In fact, for the majority of its 141 year history, the organization backed gun regulation and rarely if ever claimed that regulations were unconstitutional.

In 1934, the group’s president Karl T. Frederick testified in support of certain gun regulations that later made it into the National Firearms Act of 1934, one of the first federal gun laws. The law regulated “gangster weapons” used by organized crime, such as machine guns and short barrel shotguns.

During the testimony, Congressman Clemon T. Dickinson of Missouri asked Frederick if he thought anything being debated was unconstitutional. Although Frederick replied that he thought firearm regulation was a state issue, he also said he had not “given it any study from that point of view” that regulating guns may be unconstitutional.

Frederick also explained his view about practical gun ownership, one that would be heretical among NRA leadership today:

Ai??I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I seldom carry one. I have when I felt it was desirable to do so for my own protection. I know that applies in most of the instances where guns are used effectively in self-defense or in places of business and in the home. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.

Frederick did caution against over-regulating weapons during his testimony, but as the transcript above demonstrates, did not oppose all new gun regulations.

The NRA also went on to support the Gun Control Act of 1968. In …

Phil Gingrey

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) is a staunch conservative. He has an “A” rating from the NRA and received the group’s endorsement in his last run for office.

But after the tragic events of Sandy Hook, even Gingrey is rethinking his views. In an interview with the Marietta Daily Journal, Gingrey talked about how he might be open to regulating high-capacity magazines and tougher background checks for those who buy guns:

ai???There are some problems, and maybe these huge magazines even for someone who says, ai???look, I just use an AR-15 for target practice,ai??i?? but do you really need to be standing there shooting at a silhouette a shot a second or even quicker with that kind of weapon? For what purpose?ai??? Gingrey asked. ai???I would be willing to listen to the possibility of the capacity of a magazine.ai??? […]Ai??ai???What it is basically, if you go to a gun show and thereai??i??s somebody out there in the parking lot, and theyai??i??re getting out of their car, and theyai??i??ve got an A-15 on their shoulder or ai??i??. John Q. Public wants to sell a handgun or whatever, then thereai??i??s no background check,ai??? Gingrey said. ai???You know, youai??i??re buying a used weapon from somebody and then basically no background check.ai??? […]Ai??With the sophistication of smartphone technology, there should be an application that allows someone selling a gun to run a background check with relative ease, he said.

Gingrey referenced the man responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, describing how he was judged by a psychiatrist to be a danger to himself and ordered to undergo outpatient treatment. Ai??ai???But because it wasnai??i??t in-patient, it was not required to put his name in a databank,ai??? Gingrey said. ai???Well, I think in the state of Georgia the …

The NRA has specialized in hiring up former Democratic staffers to block gun control.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) claims to represent gun owners, but it primarily represents the extreme views of gun companies that fund it. Thanks to their dollars, it has been able to stop both Republicans and Democrats in the past from even debating common sense gun control measures, like closing the gun show loophole.

In 2012, the NRA actually went outside of its ownAi??sizableAi??lobbying operation (it employed 15 registered lobbyists in-house) to hire up some outside lobbying groups to lobby on everything from Department of Justice tracking of guns to tax issues.

One way it has managed to be so influential is by hiring up former key staffers to top Senate Democrats. One of these it hired was Patrick Robertson, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Robertson works for the lobbying firm C2 group, where he works for a number of other clients including the fast food industry.

Despite his connection to Rockefeller, the Senator has oftenAi??stood up to the NRA, earning him an “D” rating from the group.

But the NRA also employed Jeff Forbes ofAi??Cauthen, Forbes & Williams, which recently became Forbes-Tate. Forbes is a former Chief of Staff to Senator Max Baucus (D-MT). who also worked for President Clinton and served as anAi??adviserAi??to the Obama campaign. Baucus has been a strong ally of the NRA, and received an “A” rating from the group. He even cut a video for a 2009 NRA national forum:

Following the tragic Sandy Hook shooting, fellow Montana Senator Jon Tester (D) suggested that laws relating to assault weapons should be looked at. But Baucus’s response was much more muted, saying instead that …