A gun safety group has created a provocative new ad campaign calling for the renewal of a federal assault weapons ban, in the wake of several devastating mass shootings across the US that involved the use of military-style rifles.
The ad, released on Thursday by the gun safety group Brady and shared exclusively with the Guardian, features a US navy veteran of the Vietnam war reading a chilling account of coming under gunfire and being struck by a bullet.
“I remember someone picking me up as they ran. They put me down on the floor and covered me with blankets,” the veteran says in the ad. “Someone was screaming – took me a moment to realize it was me. But I survived.”
The veteran then reveals that the writer of those words was not a fellow service member but a man who was six years old when he was caught up in a mass shooting. The ad ends with the message, “Assault weapons belong in war zones, not our communities. Ban assault weapons.”
The campaign also includes images showing a casket draped in an American flag, an honor given to soldiers killed in battle, in everyday places that have been the site of mass shootings, such as schools and grocery stores.
“These weapons and their tactical features are designed for the battlefield and not for civilian hands,” said Christian Heyne, Brady’s vice-president of policy. “These are not scenarios that exist in the rest of the industrialized world. This ad is really attempting to sort of tell that story in a powerful way.”
According to a Politico-Morning Consult poll taken in late January, 65% of US voters support banning assault-style weapons while 26% oppose the policy. Heyne suggested that the ad could help viewers better understand the very real ramifications of this policy debate.
“As advocates, this is one of our chief goals, to connect with people in an emotional way,” Heyne said. “We’ve got to break through a lot of this noise and remind people that what we’re talking about is very clearly and very simply that weapons of war are tearing our communities apart.”
Brady’s push for the renewal of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, comes just weeks after another school shooting devastated a US community and reinvigorated calls for action to address gun violence. Last month, a shooter wielding an AR-15 military-style rifle attacked the Covenant school in Nashville, killing three children and three adults. The shooting prompted Joe Biden to once again call on Congress to pass a federal assault weapons ban.
“We’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship and communities less safe,” Biden said earlier this month. “Congress must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require safe storage of firearms, eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and require background checks for all gun sales, and state officials must do the same.”
Last year, House Democrats managed to pass a bill banning assault weapons, but the proposal stalled in the Senate. Now that Republicans control the House, Democrats’ chances of passing the bill during this session of Congress are virtually nonexistent. But gun safety groups have seen progress at the state level; Washington is expected to soon enact an assault weapons ban, becoming the 10th US state to do so.
Still, gun safety advocates hope to see action at the federal level, and they point to data suggesting an assault weapons ban could help make mass shootings less deadly and may even prevent them from happening. One analysis released in 2019 found that mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur when the federal assault weapons ban was in effect, while another study from 2021 concluded that the ban prevented 11 public mass shootings between 1994 and 2004.
The data underscores the urgent need to take action against assault weapons at the federal level, Heyne said. He said inaction is no longer an option.
“The answer can’t be to just put our hands up in the air and to do nothing. If we want to stop the reality that we’re living in, it will require proactive steps to accomplish it,” Heyne said. “Our leaders should have the courage to protect the most vulnerable among us.”
This article was amended on 21 April 2023 to remove some personal details.
