New debate over gun laws will test gun lobby’s influence
WASHINGTON » Greg Landsman, the Democrat challenging Ohio Republican Rep. Steve Chabot in one of the country’s most competitive House races, called on his opponent Wednesday to embrace new gun-control measures following recent shooting massacres in Texas and New York.
“Our collective grief and outrage must lead to change,” Landsman, a Cincinnati council member, said in a news release from his campaign that also highlighted contributions Chabot had received from gun-rights organizations.
It is just one example of how the debate over federal gun legislation, thrust anew to the forefront by the deadliest school shooting in a decade, in Uvalde, Texas, has begun to permeate political messaging and fundraising appeals in competitive House and Senate races. Gun-control organizations and the gun-rights groups on the other side are gearing up for an immediate lobbying push on Capitol Hill, while also investing in the candidates they would like to see make up the next Congress.
Gun control has long been popular in heavily Democratic districts.
On the flip side, nearly all Republicans are entrenched in their support for gun rights. On Saturday, an event at a shooting range in Nevada, sponsored by Gun Owners of America, attracted GOP candidates seeking the nominations for House and Senate.
But recent shootings appear to have made some Republicans reconsider their positions.
Rep. Chris Jacobs, a Republican from western New York, on Friday came out in support of a ban on semi-automatic rifles and other measures. The Buffalo News reported Tuesday that his declaration immediately led to a push to find a Republican to challenge Jacobs in the August primary. Another shooting Wednesday at a hospital in Tulsa, Okla., promises to keep the gun policy debate top of mind.
Groups close to the issue say they are watching the Hill and the campaign trail.
“I don’t think there’s a Senate race that we’re not interested in, given how close the Senate is,” said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearm trade industry group.
The group’s PAC has donated to Rep. Ted Budd, the GOP Senate candidate in North Carolina’s open-seat race, and some of its biggest checks so far this cycle have gone to House Republican leaders, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The disclosures show the PAC has contributed to Chabot, as well as to a vulnerable incumbent Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine.
Gun-rights groups are not supporting Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman, a Democrat seeking retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey ‘s seat, who sent fundraising appeals on gun control after last week’s shooting in Uvalde. Fetterman reiterated his opposition to the Senate’s filibuster rules requiring 60 votes for most legislation, rules that blocked a bipartisan background check bill that Toomey co-sponsored in 2013.
“Enough is enough,” Fetterman wrote to supporters.
By more than 3 to 1, gunrights groups, including the best-known National Rifle Association, which has filed for bankruptcy and may no longer be the political behemoth it once was, have outspent gun-control groups on elections and federal lobbying in the past dozen years. Gun-control groups have spent about $50 million since 2010, to gun-rights groups’ $155.6 million, according to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets, which tracks political money and lobbying expenditures.
Gun-control groups have begun to close the gap, especially as the NRA has hit a tumultuous period of declining revenue and foreigninfluence scandals. Still, the NRA isn’t the only gunrights organization, and pro-Second Amendment views are widely baked into Republican orthodoxy.