By Dave Workman
Amidst the growing controversy over remarks about the fantasy shooting of a political rival made in a text exchange three years ago with a colleague in the Virginia legislature by Democrat Jay Jones, now running for the office of attorney general, is s new revelation that Everytown for Gun Safety contributed $200,000 to the Jones campaign.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) is calling out the billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group for what it calls “political hypocrisy.” Everytown endorsed Jones back in June, referring to him as a “gun sense” candidate.
But Jones is currently in the hot seat and there are calls for him to quit the AG’s race, since the National Review revealed his 2022 text exchange with Republican House delegate Carrie Coyner in which he wrote, in reference to then-state House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican, “Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”
Jones also reportedly texted that Gilbert and his wife were “breeding little fascists,” according to Fox News.
While the text messages—which Jones has acknowledged and admitted he is “embarrassed, ashamed, and sorry”—are creating an uproar one month before the Virginia off-year statewide elections, the Citizens Committee has zeroed in on Everytown’s contribution, posted online by the Virginia Public Access Project. The contribution was made Aug. 26, before the Jones texts were revealed.
“Apparently,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed, “it’s okay for one of Everytown’s so-called ‘gun sense’ candidates to exchange text messages about shooting a former Virginia House speaker in the head. After all, why else would Everytown give $200,000 to the man’s political campaign? What’s even more bizarre, and downright disturbing, is that Jones is running for the office of Virginia attorney general, the commonwealth’s top law enforcement officer.”
Despite calls for Jones to step away from the race, he so far has not, although it is not likely this controversy will blow over. CCRKBA said “the macabre nature” of Jones’ remarks, coupled with Everytown’s reported silence by the Washington Free Beacon, only further reinforces the group’s display of hypocrisy.
“Clearly from the size of its contribution to the Jones campaign,” Gottlieb noted in a statement Tuesday, “the nation’s wealthiest gun prohibition lobbying group wants to buy this guy a victory in the November election. Maybe Everytown is hoping that if it remains silent, people will overlook or soon forget its June endorsement of Jones, and not make a connection between this embarrassment and Everytown’s $1 million advertising campaign supporting another Democrat anti-gunner—former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who is now running to be Virginia’s next governor. She has already made pronouncements about the gun control legislation she will sign if elected.
Spanberger is facing Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, a pro-Second Amendment military veteran and the first black woman to be elected to statewide office in Virginia. She is running to succeed current Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who cannot run for a successive term under state law.
Gottlieb said Everytown’s silence “underscores the depravity of the gun prohibition lobby’s double standard.”
“We’ve seen where some people are trying to downplay his remarks as a private conversation,” Gottlieb commented, “but suggesting that a political rival ‘gets two bullets to the head’ is not the kind of thing said casually by a person now campaigning to be the Virginia attorney general.
“It is obvious the only thing Everytown is concerned about is getting anti-gunners elected to public office,” Gottlieb stated. “We’re appalled, but hardly surprised, at Everytown. An organization so determined to buy away our constitutional rights, one election at a time, doesn’t care who it brings along to do its bidding.”
Workman is editor-in-chief at TheGunMag.com.
