Bloomberg-backed group to launch ads urging end to Charleston loophole

A gun-control group backed by Michael Bloomberg is stepping up its support for background check legislation in Congress with a six-figure ad buy this week.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit formed last year combining the groups Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, will begin running ads in D.C. publications including The Washington Post and POLITICO. It is also launching separate petitions to Congress and gun retailer Cabela’s.


Everytown for Gun Safety says it has more than 3 million members and 40,000 donors.

In the wake of the December 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, MAIG spent $12 million on an ad campaign attempting to persuade senators to back stricter gun-control measures. Last year, Bloomberg spent roughly $40 million to try and elect candidates at the federal, state and local levels who support gun control and other issues the former New York mayor backs.

Everytown for Gun Safety is pushing for legislation that would close a loophole supported by the National Rifle Association that allows people with incomplete background checks to purchase guns after three business days.

A similar bill, authored by Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), aims to stop retailers from selling guns to people with incomplete background checks, as was the case when alleged Charleston shooter Dylann Roof purchased his firearm.

The prospects of a bill getting through the GOP-controlled Congress appear bleak. “Honestly, I don’t want to build up any false expectations. I’m not aware that we’ve got the votes,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who coauthored a bipartisan bill that stalled two years ago in the Democratic-held Senate, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last month. He and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) have said they intend to try to revive the issue, however, perhaps with legislation aimed at keeping guns away from mentally ill people.

Proponents believe the recent spate of massacres should pressure Congress to act.

Roof, the man charged with killing nine black parishioners as they worshiped at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, was able to buy a gun despite having been arrested for a separate drug charge in February. The oversight stemmed from a clerical error, the FBI said last week.