Ernst Campaign Blasts Iowa Democrat Ad Making 'Light of Gun Violence'

Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) Senate campaign blasted an Iowa Senate Democrat candidate for making light of gun violence while saying that Ernst was “glorifying guns.”

Eddie Mauro, a self-described “progressive Democrat,” released a controversial campaign ad Thursday that featured Mauro touting his leftist credentials featuring Sen. Ernst in a 2014 campaign ad in which she fires a handgun and promises to “unload” on Obamacare.

Mauro said that Ernst was ignoring the plight of gun violence while “glorifying guns.”

“One of the reasons I’m running is because our current senator Joni Ernst, she thinks it’s ok to run ads glorifying guns,” Mauro said in the ad. “She doesn’t seem to care that many of those guns will be pointed at our kids, our teachers, churchgoers, concert-goers, our police officers, well I care.”

Mauro also said that the Iowa Republican’s term in the Senate has “been a nonstop assault on Iowans,” including:

Our right to affordable health care, on a women’s right to choose, on worker’s rights, on farmers’ rights, and our kids’ right to a liveable planet, and by standing by her boss in the White House, it’s been a nonstop assault on our climate, on our democracy, on decency, and what it means to be an American.

In response to the inflammatory ad, Sen. Ernst’s campaign said it was “outrageous and offensive” to make light of gun violence.

“It’s outrageous and offensive that @eddiejmauro would make light of gun violence in order to help his campaign. He should be ashamed and this disgusting ad should be taken down immediately,” Ernst’s campaign tweeted Thursday.

Mauro replied to the Ernst campaign’s tweet, saying that when Sen. Ernst “went after the ACA [Obamacare] in ’14 she put Iowan’s healthcare and pre-existing conditions in her cross-hairs.”