NRA launches ad campaign against Michael Bloomberg

The National Rifle Association this week is launching an ad campaign targeting former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has pledged to spend up to $50 million to boost candidates who back gun control initiatives this year.

“Michael Bloomberg has declared war on the NRA and our five million members. We will not sit back and let him use his billions of dollars to impose his radical anti-freedom agenda on the American people,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action.

“Liberals call this ’flyover country’ — it’s an insult,” the narrator says in a television ad titled “Insult” as the camera pans over rolling plains. “But nobody insults your life like this guy — Michael Bloomberg: Billionaire, elitist, hypocrite.”

Among other items, the ad alludes to Mr. Bloomberg’s push as mayor to ban the sale of sugary drinks in large containers and tells Mr. Bloomberg to “keep your politics in New York, and keep your hands off our guns — and our freedom.”

The ad will debut with an initial six-figure on cable television nationwide and on broadcast stations in Colorado. It will accompany a six-figure “digital and social media campaign” in Iowa, Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia and will expand to additional states in the coming weeks and month.

The campaign was first reported by USA Today.

Mr. Bloomberg has been one of the most prominent gun control advocates in the country in recent years and unsuccessfully waded into the recent Milwaukee County sheriff’s race and recall elections in Colorado last year where gun control played a central role.

But longtime Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said they have successfully linked several candidates they helped defeat to the NRA, like in House races in Illinois and California and last year’s attorney general’s race in Virginia.

“T​his November, we will help defeat others who have made the mistake of aligning with the NRA,” Mr. Loeser said.