The latest salvo in the fight to defend Republican U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt’s seat from a challenge by Democrat Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander has been fired by the National Rifle Association.
Kander, who drew national attention and celebrity status among gun control advocates by assembling a field-stripped AR-15 while blindfolded and voicing support for expanding background checks for those on terror watch lists, has been the subject of a series of ads in response by the gun rights group since then.
The NRA has poured just over $3 million on a campaign that contends that it is Kander’s support of the Second Amendment, not his weapon manipulation skills or combat experience, that is mushy.
The latest ad features a female speaker who holds that Kander’s support of Missouri House Bill 668 in 2009 translates to “Jason Kander voted against letting me defend myself at my apartment with a gun if I choose.”
Left-leaning website Media Matters argues that HB 668 was about expanding self-defense protections on justifiable homicide outside the home, which is a different concept that espoused in the ad, and regardless of the state bill, the 2008 Heller Supreme Court case codifies the right to home defense.
It should be pointed out that the legislative summary of the final bill on the state’s website holds that:
This substitute specifies that deadly force may be used against a person who unlawfully enters, remains after unlawfully entering, or attempts to unlawfully enter private property by the individual who owns or leases the private property. The individual who owns or leases the private property does not have a duty to retreat from the property.
You can read the full text of HB 668 here with the changes made to state law in bold.
The latest data gathered by the poll aggregators at Real Clear Politics have the Blunt vs. Kander race as a toss up.
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