NRA now facing well-funded opposition

Ayotte

Since the troubling Senate rejection of the highly popular bill to expand gun purchase background checks, the NRA is actually facing some high-powered opposition as two pro-gun control groups have taken to the airwaves to keep the issue alive.

The well-funded organizations engaged in this gun battle are NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Gabby Giffords-backed Americans for Responsible Solutions. On the pro-gun side are the NRA and another conservative group, the American Future Fund.

In the middle of this shootout is Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire who is scrambling to repair the political damage caused by her vote against the Manchin-Toomey amendment that would close the gun show loophole.

Here’s how Politico summed up the situation:

“There was a time when a failed gun bill might have quietly slipped off the stage. But the dynamics have shifted, since the NRA is no longer the only group in the gun debate with money, power and some signs of staying power. On Wednesday morning, the NRA announced a $25,000 television week-long television ad buy to support (Ayotte) … who's been under attack by gun control groups on the airwaves and in town halls for her vote on the Senate bill.”

The American Future Fund, which typically focuses on economic issues, not gun rights, is kicking in $250,000 for TV ads that proclaim the rookie senator showed the “courage and independence to stand up and do what's right for New Hampshire.”

According to Politico’s Alexander Burns, the ads are running on New Hampshire broadcast television on WMUR, and on cable in the Boston media market. They will expand onto broadcast television in Boston next week.

Ayotte’s Senate vote was cast in defiance of the 89 percent of Granite State voters who supported the bill. As a result, her approval/disapproval ratings in the polls dropped 15 percent and she has been confronted at town halls by angry relatives of gun violence victims.

Ayotte, trying to wiggle her way out of this mess, wrote an Op-Ed opinion piece with this headline:  ‘I Voted to Improve Background Checks.’ The former state attorney general explained her support for a much weaker bill that some Republicans latched onto as an alternative to Manchin-Toomey, which would require background checks for firearms sales at gun shows and on the Internet – two areas where 6.6 million weapons are sold annually. “We shouldn’t be expanding a flawed (background check) system,” Ayotte wrote. 

Good luck with that sales pitch. 

Bloomberg’s mayors group points out the obvious:  “Since 1998 the FBI has rejected more than a million would-be sales, and when state-level rejections are factored in, the number of denials is closer to 2 million — usually because the would-be buyers are convicted felons, or fugitives from justice, or mentally ill, among other reasons,” according to the New York Times.