WASHINGTON — The gun safety group Giffords is rolling out a $15 million campaign to help de facto Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris defeat Republican rival Donald Trump, as well as help House candidates in battleground districts who favor tougher gun laws.
The new spending blitz, first reported by NBC News, will cover paid TV and digital ads, direct mail (in English and Spanish), new polls to help allies hone their messages and the deployment of staffers and surrogates, including a co-founder of the group, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., to persuade and turn out voters. The group is focusing those resources on swing states like Michigan and Arizona, as well as California and New York, where a series of competitive races could decide control of the House.
“Battleground state voters are consistently ranking gun violence as among their top concerns,” Giffords Executive Director Emma Brown said in a telephone interview. “The issue is actually moving votes and able to really affect electoral outcomes. So we are planning to use our resources this year, particularly the $15 million, to support gun safety champions and to communicate directly with voters who are uniquely mobilized by guns in key battleground races across the country.”
Brown declined to comment on the fact that Harris is vetting a co-founder of the group, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., former Rep. Giffords’ husband, saying it isn’t getting involved in “the vice president speculation.”
With mass shootings now a regular feature of American life, Giffords' internal research has found not only that gun legislation has high support but also that it attracts groups of voters with the power to decide the election — primarily suburban women, Latinos and Black voters. Perceptions of Democrats improved “when we layered on guns messaging,” Brown said.
The contrast between the presidential candidates is sharp. Harris is already leaning into the issue, saying in her launch video that her campaign is about “the freedom to be safe from gun violence.” In a speech Thursday to the American Federation of Teachers, she said of Republicans, “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.” In 2019, Harris endorsed a mandatory buyback program for military-style weapons, which Republicans have attacked as “gun confiscation.”
Trump, by contrast, has secured the endorsement of the National Rifle Association and has been campaigning as a firm proponent of protecting gun rights. He has called himself “the most pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment president you’ve ever had in the White House” and argued that mass shootings aren’t “a gun problem.”
But in a sign that Republicans are starting to see the cause they’ve long celebrated as a political loser, the party’s 2024 platform makes no mention of guns or the Second Amendment. The platform section of Trump’s website also ignores the issue.
Harris and Democrats have called for requiring universal background checks for gun sales, reinstating the ban on semiautomatic weapons and restoring the ban on bump stock accessories. Trump and most Republicans have rejected those proposals, although some GOP senators backed modest new measures in 2022 to include juvenile records in background checks and limits for domestic abusers.
Trump has nominated judges and Supreme Court justices who are skeptical of gun restrictions, while Harris would be likely to pick judicial nominees who believe the Second Amendment doesn't prohibit significant restrictions on firearms.
