As bipartisan negotiations heat up on Capitol Hill following mass shootings in Texas and New York, the nation’s leading gun violence prevention group on Friday launched an ad campaign across a dozen states urging senators to reach an agreement on a range of firearms measures.
Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s weeklong $400,000 advertising campaign focuses on lawmakers in the battleground states of North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, as well as those in Alaska, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
The “don’t look away” ad campaign, which will start appearing over the weekend across local newspapers, billboards and digital platforms, come amid bipartisan Senate negotiations over relatively modest gun safety changes. While they do not name specific lawmakers, the ads are running in states where advocates are trying to pressure participating Republican officials to take action — from Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
The new push from Everytown, the largest gun safety group of its kind and funded in part by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, follows escalating calls from President Joe Biden to Congress against squandering another opportunity to take action. John Feinblatt, Everytown’s president, said his organization is specifically calling on Americans to urge their elected officials to act.
“When senators open up their local newspaper, drive to the airport or look up something online, our ads amplifying the need for action will be impossible to miss, and we’ll keep beating the drum as long as it takes to get lifesaving laws onto the president’s desk,” he said.
Everytown also hopes to add to the groundswell of support for tougher gun laws related to background checks and red flag warnings since the mass shootings within the last month at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. Other gun safety calls for actions include demonstrations led by Moms Demand Action outside the Capitol, student walkouts in schools across the country, and a large protest outside last weekend’s convention of the National Rifle Association in Texas. March For Our Lives, the group founded after the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., also plans to hold a protest on Saturday in Washington.