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Bang / Guns Title: Vile ad bounces off McSally, sticks to Gabby Giffords Do you know what you're doing? That's our question to the Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC after it aired a 30-second ad attacking Martha McSally, GOP candidate for Congress in District 2. The ad is a nasty piece of work. Demagoguery in heart-rending tones. A mother with sorrowful eyes appears on screen and tells the real-life story of a family horror. "My daughter was just 19 when she told her boyfriend their relationship was over. And he got a gun and shot her and my husband." Portraits emerge of the two victims — a pretty young girl and her father in military dress. The mother tears up. Her voice cracks. "He (the stalker) had threatened her before, and I knew, I just knew." Then appears the face of Martha McSally, with words both spoken and superimposed on screen: "Martha McSally opposes making it harder for stalkers to get a gun." The ad waves the bloody shirt. Takes the tragic killing of two innocents and drops it at McSally's feet, as if she were responsible. A murder indictment implied. But, of course, McSally had nothing to do with these deaths. The ad is meant to help Democratic incumbent Ron Barber in his bid for re-election. It is emblematic of a wave of tough new advertising the gun-control lobby pushed out after the slaughter of children and teachers at Newtown, Conn. did not result in meaningful gun-control legislation. The anti-McSally ad is more than hardball politics. It is base and vile. It exploits a family's tragedy to score cheap political points. And when the ad makes news because it goes too far, Gabrielle Giffords makes news with it. Because it's her group. So we ask again, Americans for Responsible Solutions, do you know what you're doing? Do the people who control your messaging know they are marring the legacy of a congresswoman known for her decency and good judgment, who practiced civility in office with such consistency she did not just reach across the aisle but found cherished friends there? We have never forgotten the stricken face of Republican Jeff Flake after he raced down to Tucson in 2011 after a gunman shot his friend Giffords and 18 others. Such was their friendship. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords never resorted to the kind of squalid campaigning this ad represents. She won her fights with energy, ideas and a disarming good nature. She didn't do nasty. So concerned was she about the breakdown of civility in politics that only a week before her own shooting, she was at a New Year's Renaissance Weekend retreat expressing her desire to improve it. After she was shot, Flake said, "A number of us have longed for more civility before this tragedy" and she is "a perfect model of civility." "We should use this opportunity to think about it more," he said. Perhaps the Tucson shooting changed Gabby Giffords. Perhaps she is the one who controls the message. But we doubt it.
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