Advertisement

States become focus for gun control advocates

 
President Barack Obama will speak at a town hall meeting on gun violence Thursday.
President Barack Obama will speak at a town hall meeting on gun violence Thursday.
Published Jan. 4, 2016

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — With President Barack Obama poised to act on his own authority to try to stem gun violence, his gun control allies are using big-money donors and shifting tactics to remake the political landscape in the national gun debate, challenging and sometimes even besting the powerful National Rifle Association in state-by-state battles.

The newfound momentum reflects a strategy to steer clear of a Republican-led Congress that has proved unwilling to touch existing federal gun laws after years of intense lobbying on both sides of the debate.

With tens of millions of dollars to spend thanks to backers like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, gun control groups have secured a number of surprising recent successes in Connecticut and elsewhere. And they are now looking to state and local officials to win approval for tougher background checks and other measures.

"The money was almost exclusively on the pro-gun side of the fence before, and we were always accused of spending our way to victory," said Richard Feldman, a former NRA executive who leads the Independent Firearms Owners Association. "Now the other side has these resources."

The organization Everytown for Gun Safety, which received $36 million in contributions last year, with the biggest chunk coming from Bloomberg, has eclipsed a number of older gun control groups in publicity and influence. In its latest push, the group is funding an ad campaign for players from the National Basketball Association to speak out against gun violence.

The group, created in 2014 after the slaughter of 26 children and adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., says its supporters have now grown to 3 million nationwide, including survivors of shootings, mayors, police officers, celebrities, and rank-and-file supporters. It has chapters in all 50 states.

Bloomberg has pledged to spend $50 million of his own money in the group's push for tougher gun restrictions — a level of spending that Jennifer Baker, an NRA official, called "obscene."

Obama is expected to move ahead as soon as this week with a series of executive actions modifying federal gun laws, and on Thursday night — a day before the fifth anniversary of the shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona — he will participate in a town-hall-style meeting on gun violence that will be shown on CNN. But the measures he is considering would be a modest tweaking of the law compared with the sweeping changes that gun control groups are pushing for at the state and local levels.

The growing importance of state gun laws was made clear in December when Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy announced that he would bar anyone on the government's terrorism watch lists from buying a gun.

Gun control supporters gained another win in Virginia in December when Attorney General Mark Herring barred anyone who holds a concealed-handgun permit in 25 other states from using it to carry a firearm in Virginia.