NRA Ad Tries to Scare Gun Owners About New York Liberals, Depicts the Wrong City

Check your facts!


The National Rifle Association released a new election ad today attacking Question 3 on Maine’s November ballot, which would require background checks on most transfers of guns between owners.

The NRA’s ad points out that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now a prominent gun control activist and the founder of Everytown for Gun Safety, “is spending $3 million to try and boss Mainers around with Question 3.” The ad opens with a view of a city skyline and the words “The New Yorkers” emblazoned below it. The narrator intones: “The New Yorkers are here and they’re trying to tell Mainers how to live.” There’s just one problem: The skyline in this ad is most definitely San Francisco’s, not New York’s.

Here’s the start of the ad:

YouTube

Here’s SF:

Yurkaimmortal/iStock

Here’s NY:

funnybank/iStock

To its credit, the NRA did remember to add a Statue of Liberty to its version—and yet somehow didn’t notice in the process that the rest of the skyline was wrong, or just didn’t care to use the right one.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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