Special interest groups are a fact of life in American politics. Such groups routinely try to sway both the public and members of Congress. They especially like to try and pressure officials running for reelection.

In fact, most groups only trot out their big advertising guns for officials running for reelection. After all, most groups only have finite resources and those who aren’t running don’t have nearly as much reason to pay attention to such groups.

That doesn’t stop Everytown for Gun Safety, though.

President Donald Trump has ended gun control talks amid an impeachment inquiry from Democrats, but one prominent group is continuing a pressure campaign against Florida Republican Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio even though neither of them are on the ballot in 2020.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun-control group backed by billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced Monday that it plans to spend $200,000 on digital advertising against Republican senators in 10 states, including Florida.

The push also includes a Moms Demand Action event in Orlando on Wednesday, where Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Winter Park, and survivors of guns violence will urge Rubio and Scott to pass gun control bills in the U.S. Senate that have passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

Yeah.

Really.

Honestly, this is hilarious. Now, if the NRA or GOA or some other pro-gun group were trying this, I’d probably be furious. It’s a waste of money for a gun-rights group to spend money trying to pressure politicians who aren’t running for office at a time when they should be gearing up for the campaign season.

Since it’s not, though, I’ll just sit here and laugh at them.

Now, it’s possible that Everytown just has money to burn. Maybe they think they can sway one or both of Florida’s senators without it being an election year for them. I honestly don’t know what the hell they’re thinking.

This shouldn’t surprise me, though. After all, these are the same people who honestly seem to believe that gun control actually works despite the mountain of evidence that it doesn’t. Maybe they actually think just lecturing lawmakers via TV commercials will actually pay some dividends too.

Regardless, though, it seems clear that they either aren’t as limited on resources as we might like or they’re even dumber than we thought. Personally, I’ve always felt that assuming stupidity on the part of your opponent was a good way to get your butt kicked, we’re better off assuming they feel they’ve got more than adequate resources to do this and still make a difference during the 2020 campaign season.

What that means is that it’s time to take a look at your gun rights groups and find one that will actually fight on this kind of battlefield. Who runs ads and runs them effectively? Once you do that, donate money. Donate as much as you can as often as you can. We need to match resources with our opponents so they don’t get the upper hand simply due to no one else getting our message.