The most striking aspect of TV advertising about gun rights and gun control lately has been its absence. In an election cycle punctuated by three mass shootings that killed 24 people and wounded 75, President Obama didn’t air a single campaign ad on the subject. Compare that silence on the airwaves during the campaign with all the confabs, talk of “executive action” and imminent proposals coming out of the White House now in the wake of the post-election tragedy in Newtown, CT.
But Obama wasn’t the only one abstaining from talk of guns on the air. Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s sole TV ad mentioning guns barely ran, and only in Spanish. In Senate and House races, the number of TV ads mentioning guns hit its lowest point since 2006.
These data from Kantar Media CMAG suggest that even in the era of microtargeting, when candidates can reach sought-after TV viewers more efficiently than ever, they see guns as a risky means of doing so. That proponents of gun rights would find it impolitic to advertise their support in the wake
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