Category: Anti-Gun Folks

I’m absolutely baffled right now. The Brady Campaign appears to be going in circles with their messaging strategy surrounding this non-White House non-beer summit.

Yesterday, they were highlighting how horrible the NRA is for not participating and reminding their followers that the NRA was the only party the media was talking about coming to the table for a policy discussion. Today’s post seemingly takes the other strategy of highlighting their participation as though it meant more than the NRA’s attendance.

The Brady-written post sounds like they are taking a serious leadership role in advancing policy. It describes the meeting as though Paul put out the plans for reform and the administration just wondered how to make it happen.

I began the discussion by listing basic measures that the Brady Campaign, and others, felt could make a difference. The list included: a strong background check system, with good and complete records of dangerous and irresponsible people, applicable to all commercial gun sales; more tools for law enforcement to stop trafficking in illegal guns; increasing the number and type of military-style weapons, including “assault clips,” that should not be readily available to civilians, like machine-guns and fully automatic weapons. Administration officials then asked questions.

But the Paul Helmke quote to another outlet sounds like they weren’t even sure what was going to come out of the non-summit and that the gun control groups were the ones trying to figure out just what they can possibly take from the debate.

“We asked a lot of questions, and they indicated they don’t have any particular policies that they’re pushing or any particular legislation that they’re pushing, right now they’re basically out gathering pieces of information,” Helmke said.

More importantly, they are publicly refuted on most of the policy issues Paul named in today’s official Brady post.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reported that administration officials are exploring potential changes to gun laws which can be secured through executive action alone.

The outside sources also highlight that the policies officials were willing to consider were focused on data-sharing and background checks, not gun or magazine bans.

I really don’t understand what the Brady message is in all of this. The posts from their internal staff seem to have conflicting key messages, and their own statements to outside media don’t match what’s coming from the rest of the Brady communications efforts. At the rate they are contradicting themselves, we can just sit back and enjoy the show.

P.S. Anyone else amused by Helmke’s measure of success being that he met with staffers at an agency for a whooping 90 minutes? Even the cop from Cambridge got 40 minutes at the White House and a beer with the President himself.

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.

They are happy to announce they’ve won a Pollie award for helping get Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois elected with a robo-call reminding Illinois voters that Bill Brady wanted school children to be mowed down with assault weapons. Clearly the standards of the American Association of Political Consultants aren’t very high. I wonder if they gave an award for the ad that said Bill Brady wanted to strangle puppies.

But you know, the NRA, they are full of scare tactics to keep their members frothing at the mouth like the mad dogs they are. You’ll never see NRA win a Pollie.

UPDATE: Apparently I was wrong about NRA and Pollies. Sent to me by someone in ILA:

I won’t be so quick to assume next time.

Her press release is here. I’m going to assume her bill’s language will be similar to the Senate bill introduced by Schumer a few weeks ago. This bill is entirely unacceptable for the following reasons:

• It threatens funding that help states put cops on the street. This is like a doctor prescribing amputation for a patient cut his leg and is bleeding.
• It expands the class of prohibited persons to include people who have not been formally adjudicated as mentally ill.
• It expands the class of prohibited person to include people who have drug arrests, but not convictions, within the past five years. It also expands it to anyone who failed a drug test.
• It ends private transfers entirely.

This is classic gun control packaged in wrapper of “common sense.” It does not respect the Second Amendment, as it allows rights to be removed without due process, and it, through a sneaky back door, attempts to end private sales. We’ll fight this bill.

UPDATE: America’s lukewarm reaction to the current rash of gun control bills has Bloomberg in a tizzy. I hope Americans continue to disappoint the Mayor.

UPDATE: Maybe he needs to spend some more time tending to New York City’s business instead of everyone else’s.

Says Dave Hardy:

In the meantime, Paul Helmke of Brady Campaign calls the hint “the most significant statement any president has made on gun violence in over a decade,” with no apparent awareness of just pitiful that sounds.

Is he including Bush’s half-hearted murmurings about renewing the assault weapons ban? I don’t even know if we can get Barry to say “assault weapon,” let alone suggesting we ban them. Of course, if you look at the Brady home page, now they’re all about assault clips. I can imagine if you threw one of these at me hard enough, it might kinda hurt.

“We’re just going to pretend you said you were cool with our agenda, Barry!” They kind of have to look at the bright side of things. They don’t have much else to bitterly cling to.

In what is perhaps, a third grade moment for the Brady folks:

Mr. Skinner’s statement indicates that CDC is placing the NRA in a preferred position by giving it advance notice of firearm-related studies CDC has finances, before those studies are published or otherwise available to the general public. Needless to say, CDC has given the Brady center no such “courtesy” notification of studies before they are published, nor are we aware of any other gun violence prevention organization receiving such notice.

Waaah! We can’t have teacher giving special treatment now, can we? Cry me a river. Their side has enjoyed the upper hand for the better part of two decades. Now they whine that the tables are turned. Get used to it.