NRA makes $1M ad buy to tout Gorsuch: report

The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) foundation is launching a $1 million television advertising campaign emphasizing the impact the Supreme Court has on gun rights, according to a new report.

The push starts Tuesday and will run from then until two days after the start of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing on March 20, McClatchy said Monday.

“Four Supreme Court justices believe you have a right to defend yourself with a gun,” the spot’s narrator says, referencing Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy.

{mosads}“Four do not,” he continues, alluding to Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. “The men and women of the NRA will not let anti-gun elites strip away our rights or our freedom.”

McClatchy said the ad will air on broadcast, cable and satellite television nationwide from Tuesday through March 22.

President Trump nominated Gorsuch, a conservative federal appeals court judge, in January as a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016.

“The Supreme Court played a pivotal role in affirming our Second Amendment rights in its historic Heller and McDonald decisions,” Chris W. Cox, the president of the NRA Freedom Action Foundation, said of the nation’s highest court.

“But it’s critical for Americans to remember that their basic right to keep a gun in their homes for self-defense survived at the court by only one vote. This ad campaign highlights that important reality.”

Gorsuch’s views typically lean conservative and the judge sits on the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit covering Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah and portions of Oklahoma.

“Gun possession is often lawful and sometimes even protected as a matter of constitutional right,” he stressed in a 2012 dissent, noting a felon convicted of possessing a firearm “might very well be wrongfully imprisoned.”

Senate Democrats have vowed to filibuster Gorsuch, meaning 60 senators would have to vote in favor of his confirmation.