Month: March 2011

From Paul Helmke:

On Tuesday, I attended a meeting at the U.S. Department of Justice with representatives from the White House, the Vice-President’s office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the FBI, and others from the Obama Administration, along with leaders from the gun violence prevention movement, to discuss how to reach the goals outlined in the President’s statement. Officials from the Administration indicated that this was the first of what they hoped would be a series of discussions. They said they had not settled on, or excluded, any relevant proposals.

The question in my mind is whether the Administration intends to keep this “series of discussions” going right on through the 2012 elections, or whether he’s going to be foolish enough to get behind specific Brady proposals before then. Helmke noted that the length of the meeting (90 minutes) and the number of White House officials at the meeting “signaled to me that the President is serious.” We’ll see.

When Sebastian told me about this Opposing Views piece from Brady, I almost couldn’t believe they would do something like that.

President Obama’s invitation to sit down and talk about ways to reduce gun violence in America was met with the National Rifle Association’s usual stubborn refusal to stop the bloodshed in favor of selling more weapons. The NRA’s ridiculous stance was roundly – and deservedly – criticized by editorial writers and columnists across the nation.

It goes on the quote from four different media outlets criticizing NRA’s position on the meeting with the Administration. Not that I want to help the Brady Campaign staff do their jobs or anything, but who in their right mind would want to show their supporters & donors that the media cycle has become exclusively about the NRA while their own political agenda of gun & magazine bans is being outright ignored in the debate with the White House? It’s not often you see a group highlighting their failure to be relevant, but the Brady Campaign seems to embrace that strategy here.