Everytown for Gun Safety previously donated $200,000 to Jay Jones, the Democrat nominee to be Virginia’s attorney general, but has remained silent since text messages from Jones surfaced in which he fantasized about shooting a Republican state leader; in fact, Everytown has since scrubbed evidence of its endorsement for Jones from its website.
The gun-control group donated to Jones’ campaign on August 26 and named him one of its “Gun Sense Candidates.” This designation is given by the gun-control group to candidates Everytown says have “demonstrated that they will support stronger gun laws and advocate for safer communities if elected into office.”
Shortly thereafter, news broke that Jones said in a series of text messages from 2022 that then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R) deserved “two bullets in the head.”
“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” Jones said to Del. Carrie Coyner (R) as he laid out a hypothetical “three people, two bullets” scenario in which he listed Gilbert alongside Hitler and Pol Pot, according to text messages obtained by National Review. “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time,” Jones said.
Jones said in a subsequent message that Speaker Gilbert was “breeding little fascists.”
Everytown then deleted its page endorsing Jones, but stopped short of disavowing his comments, rescinding the endorsement or issuing a statement.
Other gun-control groups seem to have followed Everytown’s playbook, choosing to quietly scrub their pages of mentions about Jones while refusing to comment. Only Brady has issued a statement: “Violent rhetoric has no place in our political process.”
Jones initially refused to apologize for his remarks and accused his opponent, NRA-PVF endorsed Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), of conducting a smear campaign, but subsequently said in a statement that he was “embarrassed, ashamed and sorry,” for the messages.
Many have since called for Jones to drop out of the race, including President Donald Trump (R), who said Jones should drop out “immediately,” while saying Democrats were “weak” for refusing to do the same.
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