By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
A 30-second video released in July by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” got lots of press, but it may also have largely backfired because gun rights activists quickly noted that it sends a pretty good message for gun ownership, especially by women.
The advertisement was revealed by Everytown in a fund-raising e-mail seeking contributions of $15 or more “to keep the ad on the air.” Second Amendment activists wondered why Everytown solicits money with this kind of media because Bloomberg launched “Everytown” with a $50 million inaugural budget.
The video shows a woman on the telephone to police begging for help as her ex-husband breaks into the house and grabs their son. He then pulls a pistol out of his pocket and aims it at her head as the screen goes black and all one hears is a shot.
But the “Common Sense & Wonder” blog noted, “The video by Everytown for Gun Safety is intended to show the dangers of guns in the hands of domestic abusers, but the victim, a woman, is seen helpless because she has no gun to protect herself.” An Examiner reader who has seen Everytown’s e-mail solicitation observed, “LoL… they think they made an anti-gun commercial.”
Writing for the National Review on-line, Charles C.W. Cooke observed that the video actually demonstrates that, “firearms being a great equalizer between men and women, any rules that make it difficult for potential victims to get hold of guns (and make no mistake: Everytown supports them all) put vulnerable people in danger.”
The gun prohibition lobby is using a full-court press to gin up support for what CNN called “the next front in the gun control debate.” USA Today seems on board with an opinion piece about the murder of a Georgia woman, noting that “current federal law fails spectacularly at protecting women from domestic violence,” as if somehow, they believe passage of yet another law will prevent people from getting their hands on guns, or using other weapons to commit mayhem or murder.
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a group that Bloomberg melded into “Everytown” along with Mayors Against Illegal Guns – the group that has produced a string of felonious former municipal CEOs – weighed in with a column in the Huffington Post. Watts acknowledged that after a screening of the ad on The View, “Lara Spencer called the ad ‘effective’ and after a discussion the other three hosts concluded that women might be better served by keeping guns in their homes.”
However, Watts added, two paragraphs later, this caveat: “When every split second becomes a matter of life and death, no mother should be forced to choose between running to grab her gun, or running to grab her child.” One might argue that if the mother had a gun, she wouldn’t have to run and grab her child.
All of this was done to pressure Congress to pass Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) “Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act of 2013.” It’s a measure that would ostensibly “prevent all convicted stalkers, abusive dating partners, and subjects of restraining orders from owning guns,” according to USA Today.
