Sarah Brady, the gun control activist whose crusade against Americans’ civil right to keep and bear arms had brief success in the early 1990s, only to suffer repeated reverses a decade later, died today at the age of 73, reports NPR News . . .
Ms. Brady’s efforts to push gun control on the United States ironically served to strengthen advocates for the right to keep and bear arms. As the Washington Post notes in its obituary, “[t]he NRA’s legal efforts to overturn the Brady Bill led to a 1997 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared that under the 10th Amendment, state and local law enforcement officials could not be forced to handle the background checks required by the law.”
Her campaign for gun control, described contemporaneously as “an attempt to generate an emotional response to an issue that should be discussed intellectually,” served to fill the coffers of gun rights organizations such as the National Rifle Association. By the time of her passing, support for stricter gun control laws had fallen to what polling organization Gallup characterized as “record lows”.
Ms. Brady is survived by her son James “Scott” Brady Jr., and by her stepdaughter, Melissa “Missy” Brady Camins.