Category: Anti-Gun Folks

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.

Shorter CSGV: As long as the wolves vote on who to have for dinner, the sheep needs to quit complaining!

Dave Hardy has some excellent reporting on how Bloomberg may be secretly funneling money into the gun control movement. Dave mentions a reason for this could be so that Bloomberg can fund other more radical projects, but continue to appear to be moderate on the issue. Dave posits that the reason Joyce hasn’t donated much to the Brady Campaign is because they are too moderate. If that is indeed the case, it might explain why they’ve been turning up the crazy lately. It could be the Joyce mothership, and Bloomberg, not only dig the crazy, but benefit from it. Dave also notes that the Brady organization has been hemorrhaging money. This has been going on for a while now, actually, and I’m surprised they can still function. Not only function, but they felt they had the money to hire a new President, rather than just continuing with Dennis Henigan. It’ll be interesting to see if all the crazy talk coming out Brady these days is intended to signal to mama Joyce that they’re as serious about lunacy as all the other gun control groups.

And if Joyce is really looking for crazy, why? It’s a reasonable question to ask, so put yourself in Bloomberg’s shoes. He has his Mayor’s organization. They are the moderate face of gun control, when their members aren’t busy getting arrested, indicted or sent to prison. They are the ones proposing serious policies and trying to move the middle. But moving the middle is tough, because you run into the problem of the NRA, and people who are active in the gun rights community. In fact, if there’s one thing Media Matters and CSGV have in common it’s an attempt to discredit the National Rifle Association, and harass and intimidate those who support them. The CSGV outing of gun bloggers, along with taking our quotes out of context and spinning them as racist, lunatic, or worse, may actually be part of a coordinated strategy funded largely out of Bloomberg’s pockets. This way he has the lunatic groups, who have no bearing on the policy debate anymore, do his dirty work for him. If he were to do this directly with the MAIG organization, we’d use it to attack his mayors, and destroy his credibility when he tries to move the policy debate, and he knows that.

I could be far off base here, and giving the gun control groups way too much credit, and the lunacy we’ve witnessed the past few years might only be anger and resentment as they slip farther and farther into irrelevancy. But I don’t think Bloomberg is to be underestimated. I could easily see a cohesive strategy here at work that would make perfect sense. Bloomberg can’t move the issue without discrediting NRA, and too a much lesser degree other parts of the new media and horizontal interpretive communities established in the gun rights movement. MAIG will do that (with the help of Frank Luntz) on the up-and-up, and the Joyce grantees, funded indirectly with Bloomberg money and with no credibility left to risk, get to do the dirty work.

Much like how satellites can be launched into various orbits, from low earth orbit all the way up to geostationary orbit, the gun control movement kind of works the same way. In the low orbit, you have MAIG, who mostly operate near to earth reality. The Brady Campaign have quite recently been firing their boosters to increase their orbital radius to more closely match that of CSGV. But there’s one group who just kept firing their booster, and is now headed out into deep space. That group is National Gun Victims Action Council, and Miguel has the latest coming back from the outer limits, and so does Thirdpower. No intelligent life to be found yet.

New York State Senators are taking to the papers to complain that they can’t get any gun control passed because it keeps getting blocked by the “Gun Lobby.” Well, you know, maybe when you’re finding micro uzis in the Bronx that should be a pretty strong indication your gun control laws don’t work.