Candidates reaching for guns in an attempt to relate to voters

When gun control legislation was shot down last year, it solidified the notion that American voters have a strong attachment to their firearms and are not willing to budge on the issue, no matter how slight the law's changes would have been. As November elections approach, it seems all the candidates—especially those in tight races—have latched onto this and are airing ads with them toting a gun, regardless of how ridiculous they might look.

"So far this election, we've seen candidates shoot drones, televisions, elephant pinatas, Obamacare and targets that were metaphors for Obamacare in campaign ads," Jamie Fuller reports for The Washington Post. "One candidate threatened to shoot those who tried to come into his home. Other candidates have brought guns to rallies, raffled them off to supporters or challenged their opponents to debates of accuracy at the shooting range."

"In races where the candidates would rather talk about the character deficits of their opponents . . . voters are sometimes left with ownership of a gun, a snowmobile or a pick-up truck as the only thing they definitively know about a candidate by the time November comes along," Fuller writes. "Which is to say, nothing at all."

"The one thing these ads all shy away from, though, is talking explicitly about guns and gun policy," she writes. "Guns are used to make statements about Obamacare, outside money or civil liberties. The candidates know that the 2014 midterms aren't about guns, but they would like you to know that they own one."

"But the truth remains that while ads with guns have proliferated, the only gun legislation that has made it through Congress in the past few decades has lifted restrictions on firearm usage," Fuller writes. "The flavor of gun support that politicians have inherited imparts an 'us vs. them mentality' where it often seems like Americans for Responsible Solutions and some of the gun ads from the candidates it supports can't co-exist." (Read more)  (Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes is running a gun ad where she accuses incumbent Mitch McConnell of not knowing how to hold a gun. McConnell responded by comparing Grimes to Obama, when the president ran an ad firing a gun.)