The National Shooting Sports Foundation will spend $250,000 on ads targeting Capitol Hill lawmakers as debates on gun control heat up, The Daily Beast news site reported.

The campaign is the first major ad buy for the firearms industry trade association in years. The ads will be a mix of digital, print and radio spots that appear in Washington, D.C., newspapers and on media stations.

The group plans to argue that no one cares more than firearms manufacturers about keeping guns out of the wrong hands.

"We're doing this quarter-million-dollar ad campaign to make sure we are a part of the conversation and policymakers know that the gun industry has been leading on this issue for some time," an anonymous NSSF official told The Daily Beast. "We're the ones who conceived of the instant background check system and are doing an average 38,000 of them every single day."

The last major ad campaign by NSSF was in 2013 when it sought to oppose bipartisan legislation that would have expanded federal background checks. http://bit.ly/2lyx5Yu

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