Author: Bitter

We all know that the Brady Campaign made up their own history of the first Presidential debate by talking quite elaborately about questions that weren’t asked and answers that weren’t offered. You’d think after a big flub like that, they would learn to just stop and read before things go out the door on a deadline.

Brady Applauds President Obama For Supporting Solutions to #Gun Violence. Thx Nina Rodriguez for asking the question! bradycampaign.org/media/press/vi…

— Brady Campaign (@bradybuzz) October 17, 2012

The press release doesn’t make any improvements:

Brady Applauds President Obama For Supporting Solutions to Gun Violence
Thanks Nina Rodriguez for joining the national conversation Brady has led for solutions to gun violence

Brady Campaign President Dan Gross today released the following statement today in response to a question about gun violence solutions being posed during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University:

“Since the massacre at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the Brady Campaign has been leading a national conversation asking the presidential candidates to offer solutions to gun violence.

We applaud Ms. Rodriguez tonight for joining this national conversation by using her question at tonight’s town hall to press President Obama and Gov. Romney for solutions to gun violence with assault weapons.

Who is Nina Rodriguez?

According to the video they link (and what I wrote down myself during the debate), the woman who was allowed to ask a question was named Nina Gonzalez. So, either Nina Gonzalez has a secret gun control organizer identity of Nina Rodriguez we didn’t know about (entirely plausible now) or the Brady Campaign is just that damn sloppy. (Oh, wait.)

(h/t David Lawson on the possible Code Pink questioner tip, and yes, I have screen shots for when Brady decides that making high school amateur mistakes every single time they deal with presidential policy debates is too embarrassing to let stand.)

I guess Bloomberg’s new hire is all about going to for the jugular when it comes to insulting different gun groups that aren’t signing his paycheck. This is the not-so-subtle “screw the incompetent ones” tweet of the night directed at anti-gun groups like the Brady Campaign and other smaller organizations that jumped on board with the Lehrer campaign for the last presidential debate:

Proud that @maigcoalition‘s efforts to #demandaplan led to a question about gun violence at #debate, but there’s plenty of work to be done

— Stephen Barton (@scubarton) October 17, 2012

Stephen Barton’s Twitter bio opening line: Policy and Outreach Assistant at Mayors Against Illegal Guns (@maigcoalition)

Yeah, I guess MAIG is not afraid of offending the other groups for their utter inability to get a gun control question asked during the only debate that was pure domestic policy two weeks ago.

In the meantime, the Brady Campaign isn’t willing to give any credit to MAIG’s efforts – whatever they were – because they say it wasn’t someone like them or their friends in the media, tonight was all about the little average people. (You know, those little average people from the solid blue state of New York in the Congressional district represented by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, the voice of anti-gun hysteria in the House of Representatives. Those little average voters who are just like your neighbors on national tv getting their hair done.) Their take:

DID YOU NOTICE that it wasn’t a professional journalist, experienced moderator or expert pundit who finally asked the presidential candidates about guns?

It was a concerned citizen – an average American.

And it will be everyday, concerned Americans who will keep this dialogue going.

In other words, their version is that it doesn’t matter what Bloomberg’s group is claiming since it’s not really about politically-connected people and competence to achieve a simple goal during the first major policy campaign launched by the new President of the Brady Campaign…

So, giving the gloating by MAIG and the “pretend it’s all about little people, not people more connected than us” spin by Brady, who wins in the gun control movement tonight?

I pulled out just a couple of minutes of quotes from the Brady Center event yesterday featuring retired SCOTUS Justice Stevens that focus on the Brady future.

First, you have Dan Gross assuring people that they aren’t embracing any kind of newfangled change on their issue, but going back to the old ways of Brady. What kinds of things does that really mean?

Well, you have the pre-name change days when they were calling for complete bans on handguns and ammunition. The pre-name change period was also the last time you had a non-politician running the organization. (Paul Helmke [2006-2011] was a mayor and Michael Barnes [2000-2006] was a former Congressman.) Obviously, the Brady Campaign has come full circle on that front by hiring a non-politician who has no experience working on any serious policy front and his entire background was only in one very anti-gun city where he never had to worry about concerns of law-abiding gun owners whose rights may be trampled.

Based on the remarks of his new legal top dog, Jonathan Lowy, that return to the old ways that made them great seems to be advocating for repeal of Heller. I mean, come on, “…the Supreme Court had the audacity to hold, over Justice Stevens’ dissent with three of his colleagues, that the Second Amendment recognizes a right to have handguns in the home…”? That was a not an opinion that was outside of the mainstream of American society. It really sounds like they want to go back to pre-Heller days in their advocacy strategy as opposed to taking the Helmke talking point that confiscation was off the table and now they could still talk “controls” as opposed to “bans.”

I also included the announcement of their “new” legal project. It’s basically an effort to round up names of lawyers willing to do pro bono work for them. In other words, finding people to do take their cases – and those of anti-gun governments – for free. Now, I realize that the pro-gun side has utilized pro bono work on many of the Second Amendment cases, and its so incredibly useful because there are some damn talented attorneys out there practicing law in other areas to pay the mortgage. However, I just wonder if the Brady Center had to formally establish this as a “new” concept and formal program a) in order to have something positive to say in their annual report, and b) because it’s a free way to find more workers given their recent financial concerns.

Today’s background “music” for Sebastian and I is listening to the C-SPAN airing of the Brady Center’s lunch with retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. I noticed an interesting tidbit when Dan Gross introduced Jonathan Lowy as their legal rockstar. I couldn’t help but think that was a bit disrespectful to the organization’s top lawyer – Dennis Henigan.

Then, I realized that we had not heard from Dennis in quite a while. His HuffPo blog hasn’t been updated since August even though he typically updated it about once a month. More importantly, when I did things like click on the name “Dennis Henigan” on the Brady Center site, it went to a general news page with no articles by or about him. He also wasn’t on the biographies page even though the Brady Center certainly his domain since he worked on legal issues as opposed to legislation.

A little Googling later, and I see that Dennis Henigan has left his employer of 23 years without so much as an announcement from the organization thanking him for his contributions. He’s now working with Peter Hamm at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

So, it’s very interesting to see these changes given what Dave Hardy posted about their finances of recent years.