Everytown For Gun Safety Names 31 Arizona Gun Sense Candidates

Arizonans can enter their address on the Gun Sense Voter website to learn which gun safety advocates will appear on their ballot. 

Everytown for Gun Safety, a New York-based advocacy group, announced its first round of Gun Sense Candidate distinctions Thursday, including 31 in Arizona. 

Candidates of any party can receive the distinction based on their voting records and their answers to a questionnaire on gun safety views. 

Everytown for Gun Safety, which includes organizations Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, held a virtual rally with more than 600 participants Thursday to mark the rolling out of the first round of distinctions.

In Arizona, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kelly, who is challenging Republican Sen. Martha McSally this fall, was named a Gun Sense Candidate.

Current Reps. Raul Girjalva and Greg Stanton were also named, as were four candidates challenging incumbent House members in Arizona: Joan Greene, Anita Malik, Hiral Tipirneni, and Michael Muscato. 

At the state level, 14 House candidates and 10 from the Senate received the distinction. All are Democrats except for state Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican.

Arizonans can enter their address on the Gun Sense Voter website to learn which of the gun safety advocates will appear on their ballots this fall. 

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A spokeswoman for the group said the distinctions are a precursor to endorsements, which will be announced at a future date. Everytown described the designations as “a signal to Everytown and Moms Demand Action’s nearly six million supporters, volunteers, and voters across the country that a candidate stands up for gun violence prevention.” 

The rally included speakers Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, whose son was fatally shot in 2012, and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who sought the 2020 Democratic nomination for president and is now running for the Senate. 

Everytown noted that more than 700 candidates across 36 states have sought out the Gun Sense distinction so far this election cycle, and 56% of those awarded in this first round are women. The group’s President John Feinblatt said they plan to award at least 5,000 distinctions this year. 

“These candidates can count on the support of Moms Demand Action volunteers, who aren’t going to let anything, including the coronavirus, stop them from electing gun sense champions up and down the ballot in 2020,” Feinblatt said in a press release.

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