This is the year that anti-gun groups say they have decided to roll up their sleeves, open their massive wallets and take on the powerful National Rifle Association over the issue of gun control.
The only problem is that, with issues like the deadly Ebola plague and the Islamic State (ISIS) on the front burner, nobody seems to be listening.
While former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledges $50 million to back up his Everytown for Gun Safety group, and Americans for Responsible Solutions, headed by the gunfire-wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, is aiming at least $20 million in the same direction, the explosive gun control issue hardly seems to be making a whisper in the approach to the midterm elections,
the Huffington Post reports.
Democratic pollster John Anzalone told the Huffington Post, "I can't think of one race where the gun issue has been prominent in any way."
One likely location of the next showdown will be Washington State, where Bloomberg, Bill Gates and L.A. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer are pitching in big bucks to back Initiative 594, which would require background checks on gun sales at gun shows, the Internet, person-to-person sales and even loaned guns,
WND reports.
A war chest of $8 million has been raised to support the initiative, including donations from Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, WND reports.
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, told WND, "There’s half a dozen people that have really funded this thing, to the point of craziness. If I were a voter I’d be very concerned that a few billionaires could get together and buy a ballot measure."
Television airwaves are filled with strong positions on both sides, such as the NRA's ad from rape victim Kimberly Weeks, who says, "Protecting myself is my right. Michael Bloomberg is not making me safer. If my right to self-protection is taken away, that leaves me very, very vulnerable and feeling very scared once again. "Mr. Bloomberg, you do not have the right to tell me how to defend myself."
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Bloomberg's group is targeting a host of specific candidates in TV ads, such as the one where Diane Xander, whose husband was shot by an "individual who should not have been carrying a gun," says, "People don't understand how easy it is to get a gun over the internet, at gun shows, without any background check." The ad supports Brian Frosh, anti-gun attorney general candidate in Maryland.
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In an ad from Giffords' group against David Young, a Republican running for Congress from Iowa, the narrator says, "In Iowa, men convicted of domestic abuse can buy guns without a background check," while a man carrying a shotgun gets out of a car and walks toward a dark house, where a woman trembles in fear. "The Washington gun lobby is spending thousands to elect Young and Young's approach lets domestic abusers buy guns," the narrator intones.
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Meanwhile, the NRA reports spending over $10 million so far in 60 political campaigns, with most of it going to Republicans, including $1 million each in races in North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa, Colorado and Louisiana, the Huffington Post reports.
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