Guns and Gear

NRA going on the airwaves, targeting incumbent senators up for re-election in 2014

Alexis Levinson Political Reporter
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The National Rifle Association is kicking off election season with ads targeting several incumbent senators who are up for re-election in 2014.

A source familiar with the buy told The Daily Caller that the campaign will be a combination of digital and print ads focusing on an internal White House memo that said that an assault weapons ban and universal background checks — two policies that administration has been pushing for in the gun control debate in the wake of the Newtown school shooting — would not be wholly effective in reducing violence unless coupled with other efforts, such as limiting the supply of weapons through a buyback program and requiring gun registration to prevent straw purchases of weapons.

Roll Call first reported the buy and its details.

The NRA’s newspaper ads say a mandatory buyback program is the equivalent of “confiscation,” and a federal registry would be “an illegal invasion of privacy unprecedented in our nation’s history.”

Those ads will run in local papers in Louisiana, Arkansas, and North Carolina, where Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor and Kay Hagan are running for re-election in 2014.

They will also run in Maine — the home of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is also up for re-election next year — and in West Virginia, which will be an open seat in 2014, when Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller retires.

On Monday, the ads will run in the regional editions of USA Today that are published in those states, as well as Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama.

The NRA will also run digital ads online in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia.

The digital ad has more than 275,000 views on YouTube. The NRA began running the ad last week, bracketing President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address. The NRA is tripling that buy this week.

The NRA confirmed the details of the ad campaign.

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Alexis Levinson