It’s the hunters and the hunted. MoveOn.org uses a wall-mounted moose head in a new TV ad against the McCain-Palin ticket; Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund blames dead polar bears on Sarah Palin; and the National Rifle Association says Obama won’t let you defend yourself against criminals.

MoveOn’s animated talking moose head tells us, “You really gotta question John McCain’s judgment pickin’ Sarah Palin as his VP.” After making some cracks about Palin’s national security experience — or, as the moose would say, her lack thereof — the hunter’s trophy says, “She may be a little ‘trigger-happy’ — I should know.” The ad will will run in cities Palin visits over the next two weeks.

Defenders of Wildlife takes the whole animal-killing thing a bit more seriously, after the jump…

The ad faults Palin for blocking efforts to protect the endangered polar bear, showing one bear’s bloody carcass and another made into a rug. With a nod to Dick Cheney’s hunting habits, the ad concludes, “Do we really want another vice president with these values?” The initial ad buy targets women in Northern Virginia.

In the National Rifle Association’s new ad (below), the hunted are people, and weapons are protection. Recreating a violent home invasion, the ad says, “Imagine your child screaming in the middle of the night when a convicted felon breaks into your home…You use a firearm to defend yourself and your family. Unbelievably, Barack Obama voted to make you the criminal.”

Commercials have gotten pretty heavy these days. Except for that talking moose.

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Will Evans is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal, covering labor and tech. His reporting has prompted government investigations, legislation, reforms and prosecutions. A series on working conditions at Amazon warehouses was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and won a Gerald Loeb Award. His work has also won multiple Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, including for a series on safety problems at Tesla. Other investigations have exposed secret spying at Uber, illegal discrimination in the temp industry and rampant fraud in California's drug rehab system for the poor. Prior to joining The Center for Investigative Reporting in 2005, Evans was a reporter at The Sacramento Bee. He is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.