The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence’s name is a ruse. By declaring that it wants to”prevent gun violence” the BS artist formerly known as Handgun Control avoids signaling its real goal: a de facto gun ban. This they would do by creating expensive, pre-emptive, restrictive, impractical, ineffectual and virtually unenforceable gun laws; regulations that discourage and/or prevent lawful citizens from obtaining a firearm. As for enabling concealed carry licenses so that citizens can prevent gun violence in economically challenged neighborhoods, you must be joking. But now that Daniel Gross [above] has taken the helm from Helmke, expect big changes at the Brady Campaign . . .
Or not.
Gross spoke with USA TODAY over the weekend and said he wants to start a national conversation on gun control and get people engaged in a deep way. [TTAG is reaching out for a web-based live chat.]
“Policy is a big part of the solution but people have to realize that this isn’t a political issue, this is an issue that’s claiming the lives of 30,000 people every year and eight kids every day and we need to approach it with that kind of urgency,” Gross said.
More code. Translation: “Not a political issue” means the Brady Campaign will continue to hammer Republicans for “dragging their heels” on “common sense gun control” while claiming that gun control should be a non-partisan effort that transcends any discussion of constitutional rights or liberties. Although they may not mention that last bit.
“The bottom line is making people care about this issue and care about it personally and deeply,” he added. “If you look at most gun (control) policy, you’ll see the majority of Americans are in favor of it, but that voice has yet to be coalesced and impassioned to the point where it can effect change.”
Huh? Recent surveys show—definitively—that Americans are less supportive of messing around with gun control laws than ever before. Support for the late lamented (by the Bradys) assault weapons ban has also slipped. Dramatically. And that’s from a population that couldn’t tell an assault weapon from a modern sporting home defense rifle (with a shoulder thingie that goes up).
The fact that Mr. Gross is willing to lie about his issue’s popularity, or, worse, holds this belief without any data to back it up, shows us that it’s We Won’t Get Fooled Again. Again.
Here, meet the new boss:
Michael Fleming, executive director of the David Bohnett Foundation, a social activism group based in Beverly Hills, said in an email that he has worked with Gross for almost a decade.
“As a funder that is passionate about stemming the tide of senseless gun violence in our country, I know that Dan will bring Brady a new sense of purpose and energy as they take on some of the greatest public policy challenges we, as a society, face.”
Gross helped create the Center to Prevent Youth Violence, a New York-based organization, after his brother was shot in the head during a 1997 rampage on the roof of the Empire State Building. Before founding the center in 1998, Gross was a marketing and advertising executive in New York.
Let’s look at Mr. Gross’s benefactor . . .
According to their webpage, the David Bohnett Foundation doles out cash to the vote fixers at Acorn, a great many AIDs charities and gay rights groups (nothing wrong with that, save the fact that gay people should be armed against their oppressors) and, of course, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Violence.
Bohnett has “awarded” the Bradys $198,000 since 2000. Believe it or not that makes them one of the top benefactors. Bohnett also went big for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence ($235k since 2009).
We now learn that the abortive website gunfreediningintennessee.org was a Bohnett beneficiary. (Why 2k?) Another 30k (since 2000) went to the Campus Alliance to End Gun Violence, which did so much to stop the Virginia Tech shooting. Oh wait.
There’s a grand to Handgun Control (which I thought was defunct) and 10 Gs for Chicago’s Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan (HELP). FYI friends at Media Matters For America took possession of $545k of Bohnett’s bounty since 2007.
He who owns the gold grabs the guns, eh? We’ve reported on Gross’s own Center to Prevent Youth Violence before, whose webpage has some helpful advice on how to suicide-proof your home. Here’s the level of discourse on that topic:
An NVISS Study of firearm suicides among youth under 18 occurring found that 82% used a firearm belonging to a family member, usually a parent. When storage status was noted, about two-thirds of the firearms had been stored unlocked. Among the remaining cases in which the firearms had been locked the youth knew the combination or where the key was kept or broke into the cabinet (Harvard School of Public Health).
So, more of the same, then. Misdirections, statistical manipulation and waving the bloody shirt. It’s too bad that The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence doesn’t really want to prevent gun violence with effective measures that would gain the support of gun owners (e.g., making sure that vicious criminals remain incarcerated until their testosterone levels drop, or longer).
Then again, the sort of campaign would simply provide a more effective cover for their real agenda: disarming Americans. The fight continues.