BACKFIRE: Bloomberg's "Everytown" for gun control ad sparks pro-gun conversation on The View

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg's newly-minted gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety isn't getting off to a very good start, especially for a group that, like its predecessors (Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America), didn't start with the grassroots and is simply PR smoke and mirrors.

At the time it was launched in April, and despite the fact that he can afford to hire the finest public relations experts available, Bloomberg's $50 million "Everytown" campaign forgot to secure a Facebook page - and had to threaten to sue when a Second Amendment supporter created one himself, using it to show what REAL gun safety is. The page accumulated more than 20,000 fans in just a couple of days, and state-level "off-shoot" pages began popping up all over the country.

Next, one of the group's board members, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, quit the group, citing his discomfort with some of the political work the group was planning.

Later, the group made headlines when former MAIG boss Mark Glaze admitted to the Wall Street Journal that “it is a messaging problem” for gun control groups like Everytown “when a mass shooting happens and nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting.”

Soon thereafter, the group released a list of 74 supposed school shootings that had occurred since the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. It was soon revealed by journalist Charles C. Johnson, however, that not only did some of them not take place on campuses but that “fewer than 7 of the 74 school shootings listed by #Everytown are mass shootings,” that one or more probably didn’t happen at all, that at least one was actually a case of self-defense, and that 32 could be classified as “school shootings” only if, as National Review's Charles C. W. Cooke put it, we are to twist the meaning of the term beyond all recognition.

Everytown's latest PR boondoggle is a commercial which depicts a woman calling 911 as her ex-husband kicks in the door, grabs her child and puts a gun to her head. The problem for the people in "Everytown" is that almost NO ONE in real towns who watch the commercial are going to come away with the idea that everything would have turned out ok if only the bad guy didn't have a gun. Instead, most viewers are going to find themselves wishing that the mother in the commercial DID have a gun (seeing as the Everytown commercial writers saw fit to mention that the restraining order she had obtained sure didn't help).

Think I'm being too optimistic about people's reaction? Listen to the conversation between panelists on ABC's The View after they watched the commercial and think again.

If Buckeye Firearms Association or the NRA had produced a commercial, we could not have gotten across a stronger message than this Everytown commercial does. Women deserve the right to be armed with more than a "daggone wicker trash basket," as The View host Sherri Shepherd notes was all she had when her alarm went off in the middle of the night. (Click here for a complete transcript.)

Here's one Second Amendment advocate who hopes that every single person in America sees this Everytown commercial. Money well spent, Mr. Bloomberg. Thank you!

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.