How the Arizona Senate Race Could Be a Test for the Gun Control Debate

Mr. Kelly “has not spent much time talking about the issue, but if he does, it will not hurt him as much as Republicans think,” Mr. Bentz said. Ms. McSally, he predicted, “would be fine” if she opted to vote for a bill that would expand background checks for gun buyers.

The 2018 midterm elections demonstrated that voters in districts previously held by Republicans were open to Democrats who supported gun control, like Representatives Lucy McBath of Georgia, Max Rose of New York, Angie Craig of Minnesota and Jason Crow of Colorado.

“It has turned out to be a winning issue,” said Mr. Crow, whose state has been the site of numerous mass shootings. “Not a week goes by where a parent or student or teacher doesn’t come to me in tears and tell me they are scared to go to school. When balloons pop at pep rallies, kids jump out of their seats. That’s the environment we have created. Four or five years ago, it was a very different environment.”

Mr. Kelly is nowhere near as aggressive about gun control as, say, former Representative Beto O’Rourke, a presidential candidate who has talked openly about confiscating certain automatic weapons. “I do not support that,” Mr. Kelly said. “I think we need to approach this with what most of us agree on,” such as expanded background checks.

“I own a bunch of firearms,” he said. “I don’t hunt a lot now, but I used to. I’m a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. But we can’t ever get to the point where we think a bunch of kids getting shot in the classroom is something that is just normal.”

Ms. McSally, who is trying to raise her profile with voters around the state who know her best for her loss last year to Ms. Sinema, said she wanted “to do something that is actually going to make a difference” and that she thought red-flag laws were promising as long as they involved due process for offenders.

Still, she said, her main focus is her current Senate term. “I look at every day as if these are the last days of my life, thinking about what I can do and giving every ounce of energy to make things better.”

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