I saw this article by Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign, and was just impressed at how many inaccuracies, lies, and spin were in it. We’ve all know Gross for some time, he makes Republican Mercenary Paul Helmke look like a reasonable guy. Gross is a true fanatic, and while he likely has seen all the facts and data, he’s perfectly willing to piss down our backs and declare it rain!
Buckle up, here we go!
ABC’s 20/20 special on Friday once again demonstrated the most important thing we should know about kids and guns in the home: children know where guns are, when they find those guns they are very likely to handle them, and when they do the consequences are often tragic.
Now I’ll get back to the kids knowing where the guns are, but the idea that kids will handle any gun they find, and the results are often tragic is pure falsehood. Maybe the ultra “Progressive” fanatics that still think the Brady Campaign has any relevance will buy this, but I grew up around guns, and many houses I knew where they were, and neither handled them, nor had tragic results. I was relatively sheltered compared to most of my friends. This is just a straight up lie!
We saw a young child show the camera where his mom’s gun is “hidden.”
Oh no! The HORROR!
Another boy, minutes after being instructed never to touch a gun picks it up and looks down the barrel to see if it’s loaded.
No, it was minutes after a teacher instructing him to play with some “toys” in a toy box. This was the per-ordained end-result.
A father who had been teaching his son to shoot responsibly, wept as he recalled how the boy accidentally shot and killed himself with an unsecure gun.
Yep, a loaded gun left on a bed table. Simply foolish behavior.
Unsafe access to guns in the home is a big part of the problem of gun violence in our nation. In fact it may be the biggest. Every day in our nation eight children and teens are shot unintentionally.
That’s almost 3,000 people? Methinks Gross is dipping into gang shootings to pad his numbers!
Another six teens and young adults take their own lives, many using a parent’s gun.
Suicide is sad and tragic, but it really isn’t a gun issue. The US is one of the best armed nations in the world, and approximately 50% of our suicides of any age are with firearms, but our suicide rate is right in the middle of the pack. That’s a more complicated topic for another day. Still I find this has little connection to the gist of his article, its just supplying more dead bodies for a cause that isn’t really relevant.
The problem may not seem as intense as urban violence, because the deaths are spread out in less densely populated areas where gun ownership rates are highest. But when you look at it on a per capita basis, the statistics become startling. Young people in the most rural counties of the U.S. are as likely to die of a gunshot wound as those living in the most urban.
Nope, they’re not, but you massage those numbers all you want!
Most of the guns behind these tragedies are not purchased or owned with the idea they are going to harm someone.
All of the guns discussed besides the planted guns in the toybox are owned for personal defense. Gun owners aren’t HOPING to ever harm somebody, but that’s what they’re there for. We are no longer a nation of deer and duck hunters when it comes to firearm ownership. Most firearms are now owned for personal protection.
This isn’t a gun issue. It’s a responsibility issue.
But the Brady Campaign and its compatriots focus on banning guns…
In 2000, we started the ASK (Asking Saves Kids) campaign with the American Academy of Pediatrics to encourage parents to start this conversation. It has proven extremely successful, with over 20 million parents asking about guns in homes, beginning to impact attitudes, behaviors and social norms in communities across the country.
I doubt it has been taken that seriously. Still I covered the Ask Campaign when it was first introduced.
As our successful work in this area has already shown, if we can ground our efforts in the universally common goal of child safety, through public health and safety campaigns like the ASK Campaign, we truly can work together across the country and across the political spectrum to address a very big part of the gun violence problem in America.
Brady Campaign success stories are really like French Military victories.
Reality is NOT their friend!
The what campaign? Who’s ‘Brady’? They’ve turned into a joke even among gun control groups.
Gross was brought in to try and salvage whatever was left of the organization after all the big(ger) names like Hamm and Henigan bailed, mostly during Helmke’s watch. His only job is to bring in enough money to pay his and whatever staff they have left’s salary.
I think Gross was brought in when they lost all the moderate Republicans. In the 90s gun control was bi-partisan, so having a few Republican on staff was probably a boon. Now gun control is solely in the hands of the “Progressives”, and even moderate Democrats are getting their carry permits.
These days nothing turns off a raving “Progressive” more than a group helmed by a Republican (the fact that Helmke is a RINO is irrelevant, just look at how the lefties demonize McCain, Christie, or Romney!). So another raving “Progressive” was what they replaced him with.
If the useful idiots at the Brady Campaign would just stick to the “It’s a responsibility issue” and stop fetishizing inanimate objects, they might actually make some progress and do some good in the world.
As it is, they are a laughing stock, and deservedly so.
Wait, Gun control advocates concerned with doing good?
heh! That’s a good one, man!
“It has proven extremely successful, with over 20 million parents asking about guns in homes….”
You mean like how NICS checks are “extremely successful” at “preventing criminal access to guns,” with millions completed successfully each year; most (~99%) denials being false positives; and – most importantly – most (~99.99%) of ACTUAL CRIMINAL DENIALS resulting in no federal charges of any kind, even WITH hard, incontrovertible evidence of guilt (i.e. the 4473 filled out by the felon him/her-self)? Kinda like that?
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