The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is launching a new ad as part of an effort to pressure Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to take up gun reform legislation.
The progressive outside group will go up with the ad in Kentucky this weekend, where it will appear on Fox, MSNBC and CNN.
"Our ad makes clear Mitch McConnell is out of step with Kentucky voters, even gun owners. He's corrupt and in the pocket of gun manufacturers who have spend hundreds of thousands to elect McConnell," Adam Green, the co-founder of PCCC, said in a statement.
In addition to running the ad over the weekend, Green said the group would also air at least $10,000 worth of ads "every time there is a mass gun shooting until McConnell schedules a vote on an assault weapons ban and universal background checks."
PCCC initially made the ad, which features a Kentucky hunter saying he supports banning assault weapons, in the wake of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were killed.
PCCC noted that the only change they had made to the ad was the amount of money McConnell's campaign had received from the gun lobby.
According to the ad, gun lobbyists have given $671,347 to McConnell.
"I’m a Vietnam vet and a hunter. I only shot my rifle one time this last season. One shot, one deer. But I’d be a pretty bad hunter if I needed an assault rifle to shoot that buck. I support the plan to ban assault weapons, and keep them out of the wrong hands. Because I know these guns. I know what they can do," says Gary Nutt, the hunter featured in the ad, says in the video.
"The NRA and the gun manufacturers have given a ton of money to Senator Mitch McConnell," Nutt adds.
The pressure tactics against McConnell come as the GOP leader, who is running for reelection, has refused to take up a House-passed universal background checks bill. A similar bill in the Senate has not picked up the support of any Republicans.
Instead, McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that in order for a bill to get a vote on the floor it will need the backing of President Trump.
“If the president is in favor of a number of things that he has discussed openly and publicly and I know that if we pass it, it will become law, I'll put it on the floor," McConnell said earlier this week during the radio interview.
