Who's Behind the Mystery Group Trying to Turn Gun Owners Against Republicans?

In the final days of the midterm elections, a group that's shrouded in mystery is spending some serious money in an attempt to undercut Republican candidates' support from gun owners. 

According to NBC News, an outfit called "Stand Your Ground" is involved in at least three races around the country: Florida's 14th Congressional District; where Republicans are hoping to oust Democrat Kathy Castor; the 1st Congressional District in South Carolina currently represented by Nancy Mace; and the Minnesota Senate race, where Michelle Tafoya has mounted a surprisingly competitive campaign against Democrat Peggy Flanagan. 

But in a recent debate between Honeycutt and Democrat Nancy Lacore, it was pretty clear which candidate is actually looking to pile more restrictions on gun owners. 

Lacore, a retired Navy vice admiral, backed comprehensive universal background checks and longer waiting periods before someone can purchase a gun.

“There is no rush to have a gun,” she said. “You should be able to wait until that background check is done, and we need to close that loophole because we’ve seen the impact of that right here in our community.”

Honeycutt, a Charleston County Councilwoman, argued that more gun control laws wouldn’t necessarily avert tragedies like the one in Oregon, and pointed to early reports that an armed bystander had been the one who took down the shooter. 

“If he hadn’t had a weapon in order to do that, the outcome may have been totally different,” Honeycutt said.

Flyers from the group in Minnesota, meanwhile, claim that Michelle Tafoya backs "red flag" laws, while ignoring Peggy Flanagan's support for bans on semi-automatic centerfire rifles and "high capacity" magazines, universal background checks, and "red flag" laws. The flyers also ignore the fact that Evertown, Giffords, and Brady have all endorsed Flanagan's campaign for U.S. Senate. 

So who's behind Stand Your Ground? At the moment, it's a mystery. 

Stand Your Ground is not registered as a political group with the Federal Election Commission. Corporation records in Delaware show a nonprofit group called Stand Your Ground registered there less than two months ago, though it’s not certain this group and the one sending the mailers are the same entity.

However, political nonprofits often register in Delaware, where corporations have to disclose little public information.

Some of these tactics have popped up in other recent elections. In the 2018 midterms, Senate Democrats’ top outside group funded other nonprofits that attacked Republican Senate candidates from the right on guns, immigration and other issues.

As NBC News says, we've seen shady tactics like this before, and the Democrats have rolled out some other dirty tricks this cycle like recruiting a random Dan Sullivan to run for Senate in Alaska in the hopes of confusing voters who want to vote for incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan. Trickery like this isn't exactly a sign of confidence in Democrats' ability to win on the merits, but at the end of the day it's the votes that matter and not how they were achieved. 

Gun owners need to be wary about the messaging they're getting, do their own research, and vote for the candidate that will best defend the Second Amendment if elected. Some of those Republicans may not be perfect, but in almost every case they're going to be far better than their Democrat counterparts. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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