Flake unswayed by ad on gun control

Two weeks of heavy television advertising pressuring U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake to support nearly universal background checks for gun buyers hasn’t changed the freshman Arizona Republican’s mind.

Flake told The Arizona Republic

last week that the commercial from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s bipartisan group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which urged viewers to call Flake, hasn’t generated much heat at his office.

While his staff has heard from people critical of his March 12 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee vote against a Democratic gun-control bill that included checks for buyers, he said the group’s ad also prompted calls from supporters.

Flake, who says he wants to strengthen background checks with regard to mental illness, in turn chided Bloomberg for his controversial attempt to limit servings of sugary soft drinks to 16 ounces or fewer.

“I don’t think people expect me to take my cues from the mayor of New York on ‘Big Gulp’ policy or gun policy,” said Flake, referring to 7-Eleven’s trademark large drink size.

“Just because the mayor has watched the Naked Cowboy perform on guitar in Times Square doesn’t mean he understands rural Arizona,” he said.

But some gun-control advocates have suggested that Flake has been misrepresenting what’s in the Senate gun bill, which is widely expected to be watered down as it moves through the process.

In a March 31 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Flake said that even with limited family exemptions for sales, “you’d still have issues with people in a private setting transferring or loaning a gun for somebody. Loaning a shotgun to go on a duck hunt, for example.”

However, the bill specifically spells out that a gun can be temporarily transferred for “lawful hunting” as long as the activity is legal where the unli- censed transferee possesses the firearm; the transfer occurs during the designated hunting season; and the transferee has all required licenses or permits.

Flake later told that the hunting exemption is too narrow and that he is confident the bill as written inevitably would cause complications and hassles for lawful gun owners.

“I still maintain what I said was right: There are issues with those kinds of transfers, even with the exemptions,” he said.

The mayors group cites polling that indicates mandatory background checks for all gun buyers have 90 percent support in Arizona.

Still, Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said he was puzzled by the large TV ad campaign targeting Flake, a libertarian-leaning former member of the House who isn’t even up for re-election until 2018.

“What a waste of money,” Sabato said.