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The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is the most media-friendly of gun control organizations. If you’re a journalist writing a story about a someone who got shot, just ring up Director of Communications Caroline Brewer (202-289-5769) and you’ll have a “lax gun laws are to blame” stat and quote to end your piece before you put down the phone. Here’s one closing out today’s Seattle Times story Documents: Boy got gun during visit with mother . . .
In the latest rating by the Brady Campaign, a national gun control advocacy group, Washington scored no points in the child safety category.
“Washington state is a loosely regulated state when it comes to firearms,” said Gregory Roberts, executive director of Washington Cease Fire, a Brady Campaign affiliate.
Of course, that’s local angle stuff—tacked onto a story from the AP about “a 9-year-old boy who brought a gun to a Washington state elementary school, wounding a young classmate when the gun accidentally went off.” You know “discharged from his backpack.” For some reason, the DA wants to blame the child rather than the gun. Go figure. Sarcasm off.
I digress. My main point: The Brady Campaign gets an inordinate amount of metaphorical ink despite the fact that its leader, one Dennis Henigan, has had a messy reality divorce.
Normally, Dennis hides his semi-psychotic break with dubious stats and vague proposals. Today’s he’s broken cover to reveal to the world—well the Huffington Post—his relatively fragile mental state or, more charitably, his org’s latest gun control agenda.
The intel comes from a HuffPo post entitled Calderon’s Billboard of Crime Guns, and What It Means. Dennis is riffing on the less-than-entirely-professional-looking “No More Weapons” billboard recently erected by the Mexican government on the U.S. border (click here for TTAG’s take):
The solution to gun trafficking to Mexico is also the solution to gun trafficking within the U.S.: stronger federal gun laws. [Their emphasis] At the very least, high-firepower assault weapons and assault clips should be banned, background checks should be required for all gun sales, uniform limits should be placed on bulk sales of handguns, and greater authority should be given to federal law enforcement to shut down the dealers who aid and abet the traffickers.
“Background checks should be required for all gun sales”? Like they aren’t now? Oh wait; Denis is talking about private firearms sales. You know; the so-called “gun show loophole where one law-abiding person can sell another law-abiding person a gun without government intervention.
Denis wants those sales under federal supervision, just as they are for knives, fertilizer, baseball bats and other dangerous or potentially dangerous weapons. Yes, that’ll work. ‘Cause a criminal buying a gun from a private seller would submit to a background check, right? And then he or she’d fail! And be reported! And be arrested! Just as they aren’t with the gun dealers FBI background check system.
Of course, that’s why criminals don’t buy guns from gun dealers—unless the ATF tells the dealer to let the sale go through (for reasons we still don’t fully understand). By the same token, if a criminal didn’t submit to a background check, no one would sell them a gun. ‘Cause that would be illegal. And if someone did sell a criminal a gun, the bad guy and seller would be easier to catch because then it would be illegal. Well, illegaler. As it’s already a crime to sell a convicted criminal a gun.
See how that doesn’t work? There’s such a major disconnect between Denis’ theory and its [thank God theoretical] implementation that his screed kinda leaves you wondering if Hennigan is even capable of doing the mental math. As in intellectually “challenged.”
You will also note that the gun grabbers’ champion has moved from a jihad against poorly defined “assault weapons” to a call for a complete ban on “high firepower assault weapons” (following-up on the transition from “high-capacity magazines” to “assault clips”).
It’s also well worth recognizing that The Brady Veep has transitioned from supporting an executive order (held up in the courts) requiring 8500 or so border state gun dealers to report multiple long gun sales within 24 hours of purchase, to “uniform” limits on “bulk sales of handguns.”
Pardon my internetese, but WTF does that mean? What is a “bulk sale”? When did handguns become the central issue in America’s inherently leaky government-approved arms sales to the Mexican military and police? Sorry. I mean, [alleged] U.S. gun store collusion with Mexican gun smugglers?
Meanwhile, you’ll also excuse me if the vague phrase “greater authority” combined with the words “federal law enforcement” scare the you-know-what out of me.
Let’s talk tunnel vision. Hennigan’s gun control polemic completely ignores the fact that the feds already tried to stem the so-called “Iron River” of guns flowing from U.S. gun stores to Mexican drug thugs. You know; Fast and Furious. Just for fun, let’s call the ATF’s “botched sting” Uncle Sam’s “path of least resistance” plan.
For gun traffickers, there should be no more “path of least resistance” from American gun shops to Mexico, or to American cities and towns. Trafficking of assault weapons and handguns out of American gun shops is not just a Mexican tragedy. It is an American tragedy as well.
See what I did there? I wonder if Mr. Henigan will catch that, displaying as he does a genuine talent for seeing what he wants to see, and completely ignoring the rest.
Here’s the real American tragedy: advocates who address an important issue like gun rights without putting forward anything remotely resembling a coherent argument. And the fact that media gives these illogical intelligentsia air time.