For the first time in over a decade, the National Rifle Association is directly reaching out to Latinos.

The influential pro-gun organization released a minute-long ad last month starring former Olympian Gabby Franco, who says violence in her native Venezuela increased when lawmakers stripped away gun rights.

"We were told we would be safer without them. Of course, the politicians, the rich and famous, their bodyguards, and criminals - the still have their guns," Franco said. "Everyone else lives in fear. Mothers and fathers are powerless to defend their families."

Franco warns fellow Americans to heed Second Amendment rights and "never ever take it for granted."

NRA Shifts Focus to Minorities

Most NRA members are considered white, rural Americans with conservative values. Nearly 80 percent of Latinos - the fastest-growing demographic in the country - favor gun control over gun rights, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study. Two-in-ten Hispanics said they have a gun at home, comparable with African-Americans but much less likely than whites.

While the NRA has not confirmed Hispanic outreach efforts, the national ad is a sign that they're reaching out to minorities in time for the 2016 presidential election. A Spanish-language website launched in 2006 had the same goal, but it shut down for unspecified reasons.

The Freedom's Safest Place was created with this in mind. Franco's story is one of 19 featured on the NRA-initiated campaign's YouTube page. One features a Greek immigrant who survived the Nazi uprising, and another - entitled "My Rights" - focuses on an elderly black woman who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. but was nearly evicted from her home after purchasing a firearm.

Gun Rights in the 2016 Presidential Election

A record 27 million Latinos will be eligible to vote in November's general election, including some 3.2 million millennials who became eligible between 2012 and 2016. If Pew Research Center findings stay true, Latinos' anti-gun beliefs factor into NRA and Republican candidates campaign strategies.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump is an adamant proponent of the Second Amendment, saying law-abiding gun owners have the right to defend themselves. Cuban-American Sen. Ted Cruz shares the sentiment, as does NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who recently challenged President Obama to a one-hour debate over gun control proposals.

"If the President really wanted to make Americans safer, he'd pick up the phone and tell his Justice Department to flip Chicago upside down until every criminal with a gun, criminal gangbanger with a gun, and drug dealer with a gun is arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned to the fullest extent of the law," LaPierre said in a video statement last January.

Leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton touched on gun control in a 30-second ad released last November. In the clip, entitled "Together," the former Secretary of State proposed closing loopholes in addition to enhancing background checks.

"How many people have to die before we actually act, before we come together as a nation," Clinton said.

