[caption id=”attachment_88023″ align=”aligncenter” width=”5184″] AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov
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Michael Bloomberg vowed to spend $50 million to take on the National Rifle Association earlier this year. Now the NRA is firing back.
The group launched an ad campaign Tuesday in Iowa, Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia attacking the former New York City mayor, an unusual approach given that Bloomberg is not running for office this year.
The initial ad, titled “Insult,” calls Bloomberg a “billionaire, elitist hypocrite” who is trying to ban many parts of American life.
“Bloomberg tries to ban your snack foods, your soda and most of all, your guns,” says the ad. It concludes by telling Bloomberg to “keep [his] politics in New York.”
The ad depicts Bloomberg as out of touch with rural America, not a hard sell on a man who called Colorado “as far rural as you can get” and said of certain areas, “I don’t think there’s roads.”
“Liberals call this flyover country. It’s an insult. But nobody insults your life like this guy, Michael Bloomberg,” says the ad, while depicting a woman driving a pickup truck through a lush rural landscape.
The NRA sees the ad as necessary to counter “Everytown for Gun Safety,” a group Bloomberg launched earlier this year. Everytown plans to copy the NRA’s “take no prisoners” approach by going after elected officials who block gun-control efforts.
“Michael Bloomberg has declared war on the NRA and our five million members. We will not sit back and let him use his billions of dollars to impose his radical anti-freedom agenda on the American people,” said Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action in a statement.
“Our effort will expose Bloomberg as an arrogant hypocrite who thinks he knows best how people should live their lives.”
Watch the “Insult” ad below:
