DIVERSE NATIONAL, LOCAL LEVEL LAWMAKERS REFUSE NRA MONEY
In only 10 days since the campaign’s nationwide launch, the #NoNRAMoney Pledge has reached over 60 million people online and has drawn more than 200 candidates and lawmakers who are publicly refusing funding and support from the National Rifle Association.
Nearly a dozen candidates for Governor have signed including every Democrat running to replace Florida Governor Rick Scott, who once touted his A+ NRA rating and is lauded by the NRA for having “signed more pro-gun bills into law in one term than any other governor in Florida history.”
#NoNRAMoney is a nonpartisan campaign to urges candidates and lawmakers to refuse NRA funding and to educate voters on the irrational stranglehold the NRA has used to block unfettered research, honest debate and common sense gun policy.
Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joined the pledge and urged her colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join her. In remarks to the California Democratic Convention Pelosi said: “The Stoneman Douglas students of Florida are holding public officials accountable to save lives. Let us salute those students for their courage and clarity; and let us salute them by pledging not to take any NRA money!”
"Democrats and Republicans need to reject money from the NRA, period,” said David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas Student and key organizer of the #NeverAgain movement. “They are either with the NRA or they're with the people on the receiving end of the the kind of violence we faced in our hallways. It's as simple as that. On March 24, we will join together across the country at marches from Washington, DC to small towns in every state and send an unmistakable message of accountability and reckoning to those in the pocket of the NRA,” continued Hogg. “With my fellow MSD students, other survivors and millions of allies who are with us, politicians will be put on notice that if they take the blood money of the NRA we will vote you out."
“The #NoNRAMoney pledge is being taken by candidates running not only in progressive enclaves but conservative strongholds”, said Nadine Smith, a co-organizer of the campaign. “The first to sign the was a retired police sergeant and Army veteran who is running in Pennsylvania's State Assembly District 8 an area of the country where few candidates have ever taken on the NRA.”
Other early signers include Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Florida state representative whose Orlando district includes the Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were killed in an attack that targeted a mostly young, gay and Latino crowd. Understandably, 16 signers come from Colorado, where the mass shooting at Columbine High School focused national attention on this issue in 1999. In the past few days, several key organizers of the #NeverAgain movement have amplified the #NoNRAMoney campaign, focusing more attention on the NRA’s strongarm tactics for blocking progress on gun safety.
Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016 said the effort is just beginning. “The NoNRAMoney campaign will only continue to grow and gain momentum in this critical midterm election year. We survivors are watching our lawmakers. We are demanding our candidates take a stand and we are organizing to end the NRA stranglehold that has warped gun policy in America for too long.”
For a full listing of those who have taken the pledge see here:
For a complete listing of lawmakers who take NRA money see here:
NoNRAMoney.org was created for the sole purpose of telling candidates they must reject and denounce the NRA or they don't get our votes.
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