Ads Slam Rep. Morgan Meyer (HD-108), Rep. Angie Chen Button (HD-112), and Rep. Matt Shaheen (HD-66) For Their Inaction In the Face of Two Crises: COVID-19 And Gun Violence
AUSTIN, Texas – Today, Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund announced a new slate of television ads in key state House battleground districts in the Dallas suburbs. Everytown is spending $600,000 to run the ads, part of which will support ads run jointly with Forward Majority.
The TV ads are in addition to $2.25 million in state House ads already announced. The new ads highlight the failures of state House Republicans Rep. Morgan Meyer, Rep. Angie Chen Button, and Rep. Matt Shaheen to address gun violence, and fight for the health and economic security of Texas families. Candidate-specific versions of the ads will run on broadcast and cable in the Dallas media market through Election Day.
WATCH THE ADS “SAFER,” “TWO CRISES,” AND “QUIT”
“Texas has experienced four of the deadliest mass shootings in recent history, and yet Republican leaders in the statehouse chose to cave to the gun lobby and weaken gun laws,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “Now the choice lies with voters, and Everytown is going all-out to help Texans elect leaders who will pass common-sense gun safety laws.”
“For years, our lawmakers have ignored rising levels of gun violence and failed to pass common-sense gun safety laws,” said Gaby Diaz, a volunteer with Texas Moms Demand Action. “We’ve had enough of their inaction – that’s why we’re going to elect a gun sense majority this November.”
Polling regularly finds that the vast majority of voters in Texas support common-sense gun safety laws.
- Texas voters support stronger gun laws by a 5:1 margin (51% stronger/9% less strong). And in battleground districts, voters support stronger gun laws by an even larger 54% to 10% margin.
- Over three-quarters of Texas voters (78% statewide; 86% of battleground voters), including 84% of voters who support stronger gun laws, consider a candidate’s position on guns “very important” to their vote in 2020.
- Vast majorities of voters statewide and in battleground districts — including undecided voters, gun owners, Latino voters and suburban women — support individual gun safety measures, including blocking domestic abusers from having guns (91% statewide; 89% in battleground districts), requiring background checks on all gun sales (87% statewide; 82% in battleground districts), and red flag laws (80% statewide; 77% in battleground districts).
- Sixty percent of voters, including a majority of Republican women (57%) and voters in battleground districts (58%) say they would never vote for a candidate who doesn’t support background checks on all gun sales.
- Compared with other candidate positions on issues like health care, national security and immigration, opposition to background checks on all gun sales is the single most disqualifying candidate position among suburban women by a nine-point margin, and tied for the top among Latino voters.
Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidates flipped 10 seats in the state House in 2018. Similar to Virginia in 2019, nearly all of the battleground seats in Texas are housed in the fast-growing suburbs, where Everytown polling shows gun safety is a winning issue. More than 80% of Everytown’s offensive targets are in the Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston metro areas.
