Yet, according to the Washington Post, the two groups are partnering in a new ad campaign aimed at Democrats, and are planning on spending big money in support of their disparate causes.

Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund and Planned Parenthood Votes announced a $1 million ad campaign today focused on reproductive rights and gun safety, combining two key issues for the Democratic base. https://t.co/XxqHv9FMHW

— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) August 20, 2024

According to Wells, the new ad (which you can see below) will run in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; all key battlegrounds for both the Harris and Trump campaigns. 

The ad starts by attacking Donald Trump's "extreme" position on abortion, highlighting a comment where he said he was proud to have undone Roe v. Wade. It then shifts to his speech to NRA members where he said he "did nothing" on gun control despite "great pressure" to do so. 

"If you want a president who's proud to protect abortion rights and take real action to reduce gun violence, there's only one choice", the ad continues before touting Kamala Harris. 

Notably, the Everytown/Planned Parenthood ad doesn't mention a single policy offered by Harris, either on abortion or gun control, which fits right in with the Democrats' broader strategy of staying as vague as possible about what Harris would actually do if she's elected in November. And the partnership, as ill-fitting as it might be, is less surprising when you remember that the executive director of Everytown subsidiary Moms Demand Action is Angela Ferrell-Zabala, who came to the anti-gun group from  Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, where she served as National Director of Strategic Partnerships. Ferrell-Zabala was first hired by Everytown to serve as the group's Chief Equity, Outreach and Partnerships Officer before being promoted to head up its Movement Building Department. In 2023 she was elevated once again to serve as the head of Moms Demand Action after Shannon Watts stepped down. 

Over the past few years, Everytown has become increasingly comfortable co-mingling its gun control messaging with other issues. In 2020, for instance, the group sent out campaign mailers in several states that hit candidates on school choice, health care, and drug prices. Since the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Everytown has leaned in even harder to pro-abortion campaigning, including last year's contest for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

In that race, Bloomberg’s Everytown announced it will spend $500,000.00 in opposition to one candidate, Daniel Kelly, and the ad that the group has launched spends as much time, if not more, talking about Kelly’s position on abortion as it does his position on guns.

To make matter worse, the messaging on Kelly’s positions on guns is misleading, at best; an outright lie, at worst.

The ad claims Kelly “wrote the court decision making it easier for dangerous people to carry guns in public.” But the decision to which the ad presumably refers was a case involving preemption, and whether a local transit authority could ban the carrying of firearms on city buses by law-abiding citizens who have a permit to carry a concealed firearm.

Wisconsin’s concealed carry statute gives only the state the authority to determine who may lawfully carry a concealed firearm, and where those with permits may or may not carry their firearms. The City of Madison’s transit authority had prohibited “weapons” on buses since 2005, but when Wisconsin enacted Act 35 in 2011 to establish its concealed carry permit law—which did not prohibit carrying firearms on public transportation, nor allow for local governments or the agencies that serve under them to prohibit it—the Madison transit authority did not change its rule.

A lawsuit ensued, the transit authority lost, and Daniel Kelly, who was serving on the Wisconsin Supreme Court at the time, wrote the 5-2 majority opinion.

In other words, either Everytown is lying about the opinion “making it easier for dangerous people to carry guns in public”—as the opinion did not make the issuing standards for obtaining a carry permit any less restrictive or change any aspects of the application process, as such a statement implies—or Everytown simply thinks anyone with a Wisconsin carry permit is “dangerous.”

I'm gonna go with the second option, especially given Everytown's hostility towards the right to carry and their support for post-Bruen efforts in states like New York, New Jersey, California, and Maryland to restrict lawful carry to a few city streets and sidewalks. 

While restricting the right of self-defense and expanding the ability to have an abortion might not seem like traditional common ground, there's one good reason why Everytown and Planned Parenthood are partnering to drum up support for Kamala Harris: women voters. A recent poll from Economist/YouGov found abortion and "guns" to be a "very important" issue for 58% of women, and about 2/3rds of voters who say they're leaning towards or planning on backing Harris say the same thing. Just 30% of those who plan on voting for Trump called abortion "very important" to their plans in November, while 46% called guns a "very important" issue. 

Overall, however, the top issues for voters are the economy, inflation, immigration, and government spending. That's bad news for Harris, who's the pseudo-incumbent. It's no wonder that Democrats, along with their allies in the gun control and abortion lobbies, are trying to change the conversation to abortion and gun control. But is there a way to get voters to think critically about the anti-gun ideology being pushed by the Harris campaign and other Democrat politicians? 

One way would be to remind voters that when Democrats talk about "reducing gun violence", they're not talking about going after violent criminals, but lawful gun owners. It's Democrats like New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, for instance, who want to prohibit moms from lawfully carrying a firearm when they take their kids to the park or playground. Kamala Harris said she was deeply troubled by the Supreme Court's decision in Bruen, which allowed women in states like New York, California, and New Jersey to (theoretically, anyway), obtain a license to carry without having to document a "justifiable need" to bear arms in self-defense. When it comes to abortion, Harris is all about a woman's right to choose. When it comes to the right to keep and bear arms, on the other hand, Harris believes the State should be the one to decide whether or not you can carry and where you should be allowed to defend yourself and your family from harm.