The Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund is spending millions to support candidates in four states, indicating that gun control is shaping up to be an issue in the November elections, the Washington Post reports. The political arm of the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety plans to spend up to $10 million in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. It will include contributions to candidates, as well as independent expenditures such as mail, television, radio and digital ads. “This is not a movement of blue states. This is a movement of Americans,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “The old third-rail warnings are out the window and you can … work on gun safety virtually anywhere in this country.” He called the initial sum is a “curtain raiser” on what will come between now and the election.
In Georgia, the group is backing Democrat Stacey Abrams’s gubernatorial race. Abrams has called for universal background checks for firearms sales and repealing a state law that allows permit holders to carry guns on college campuses. The group is also working to elect Lucy McBath in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. Her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was fatally shot in 2012 in a dispute about loud music in Jacksonville, Fl. In Michigan, it supports Democrat Gretchen Whitmer for governor and Democrat Dana Nessel for attorney general. Nevada, it is attempting to defeat Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is running for governor. Laxalt opposed a 2016 ballot initiative approved by voters that expanded background checks. The group is backing Democrat Steve Sisolak. In New Mexico, Everytown’s action fund is backing the gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham.