(Daily Caller) A crumbling economy and porous border, or the scary project 2025 and loss of “reproductive rights”; those are the messages both parties are inundating Americans with as election day rapidly approaches.
But if Republicans hope to reach the estimated 10 million gun owners not registered to vote, hunting and pro-gun organizations alike know traditional messaging won’t do it. A coalition of pro-gun organizations believe those non-voters could swing the election, and are using hunting and firearm influencers, social media and messaging catered specifically towards gun owners to engage them.
“Bill Clinton acknowledged, as did Clinton’s campaign, the White House spokesman Joel Lockhart admitted, that the gun vote cost Al Gore the White House. It cost John Kerry the White House. It cost the Democrats control of Congress in 1994 after they passed the Clinton gun ban, and we believe it can be a determinative factor in this election in places where there’s high gun ownership, in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana, Arizona, Nevada,” Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told the Daily Caller.
“We believe [gun owners] will be a determinant factor, particularly when the contrast is so stark. You have a candidate on the Democrat side who was coronated and wants to literally, wants to send the police to your home to see how you store your guns, and wants to confiscate firearms,” Keane added.
Former President Donald Trump himself believes gun owners can sway the election. Speaking at a recent rally, he said that the National Rifle Association had shown him numbers about how infrequently gun owners vote. “If you would vote, nobody would beat us,” Trump said.
No matter your reason for owning a firearm — whether for hunting, self-defense, or just as an exercise of your Constitutional right — law-abiding gun owners have a clear choice this fall if they hope to preserve their Second Amendment rights. https://t.co/IisqXxUbb5
— NRA (@NRA) October 4, 2024
According to Vote4America, more than 10 million gun owners across the country are not registered to vote. 515,277 are in Pennsylvania and about 370,000 each are in Michigan and North Carolina, according to data obtained by the New York Post. In Georgia, Wisconsin, Missouri and Virginia, more than half a million gun owners are not registered to vote, and another 133,000 are not registered in Arizona.
For Republicans, these figures can be perplexing, but gun owners explained to the Caller that there is skepticism towards voting and politics as a whole in the community. Some believe that because they don’t want the government in their business, then they shouldn’t get involved by voting.
“I think that we as conservatives and gun owners rest on our laurels because we feel like we have the Constitution and we have the truth on our side, and that we don’t really see the threat for what it is. If you even peek behind the curtain of the gun control lobby, you’ll see that it’s starting to expose itself now that they are willing to usurp or destroy the Constitution in order to get their New World way. So I just think it’s a little bit of ignorance and a little bit of apathy that they don’t think that it’s going to happen here,” Dianna Muller, founder of Women for Gun Rights, told the Caller.
Muller explained that she believes many gun owners don’t trust the integrity of the election process, which also may drive some away from voting.
To combat this skepticism, pro-gun organizations have recognized that their messaging can’t mirror traditional political ads. At Hunter Nation, Keith Mark, a self-described traditional Democrat, told the Caller that it starts with identifying gun owners that have the “traditional, conservative values of God, family, country, the Constitution and the hunting lifestyle” and focusing on them ahead of the election. But the secret, he said, are the platforms the organization uses to carry its message to those voters.
“It’s not only the message, it’s how we deliver it and who delivers it, and so we rely very heavily on hunting influencers and hunting celebrities,” Mark told the Caller.
“Instead of selling a product, we’re selling freedom. We’re selling their lifestyle. We’re selling the ability to be independent and not hassled by your government, because these people that hunt when we poll them, it’s just like, ‘hey, I don’t want the government in my business, and so I’m not going to go get in their business.’ Well, we figured out how to message them and let them know that, ‘hey, listen, they’re going to come into your business. They’re going to take over your business if you don’t go vote once a year.’”
“So it’s like, basically, guys, you need to get off your tree stands and out of the duck marshes, and out of the deer woods and pheasant fields and go vote,” Mark said, adding that the group never pushes the demographic to vote for a specific candidate.
Kick your fellow real American hunters to vote!
Go to https://t.co/MLcuQUPzNGJoin me for full on truth logic and commonsense on my @realamericasvoice Spirit Campfire:https://t.co/3xSbZaP8SB#truth #logic #commonsense pic.twitter.com/TNj3J4SBxV
— Ted Nugent (@TedNugent) October 7, 2024
