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Anti Freedom Brady Campaign Continues Slide Into Irrelevancy

Brady Campaign Blunders its way To Irrelevancy

National Rifle Association

Washington, DC --(AmmoLand.com)-The notion that lemmings deliberately hasten their demise by rushing into the sea may be a myth, but the anti-Second Amendment group and its spokesmen really are scurrying through a series of blunders that may hasten their steady march to irrelevancy.

In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the group’s two theories about the Second Amendment were rejected by the Supreme Court, one of them by five justices and the other by all nine. In 2009, they tried, with no success, to frighten America about tourists carrying guns for protection in national parks.

This year, they’ve insulted their most powerful ally, President Obama, for not setting aside the economy, the war, and his social agenda to push for gun control legislation Congress does not support. They’ve given the states their worst “Brady grades” ever, even though violent crime continues to decrease. And, they’ve badgered the Starbucks Coffee Company for allowing customers to legally carry firearms in its stores.

This week, though, Brady lawyer Dennis Henigan—the world’s most prolific advocate of the legal theories the Supreme Court sent to the shredder two years ago—further diminished the group’s credibility by claiming “The evidence is overwhelming that the ’shall-issue’ concealed carry laws have been a disaster for public safety. . . . [T]he scholarly research shows that the laws generally have been ‘associated with uniform increases in crime.’”

If he had just pushed himself away from the computer after his first four words, he would have been much better off. There’s “evidence,” all right, and it’s certainly “overwhelming.” Today, there are 36 states with “shall issue” laws—an all-time high. Sixty-three percent of Americans live in “shall issue” states, five million Americans have carry permits, and two states don’t even require a permit to carry concealed.

“Uniform increases in crime”? The nation’s violent crime rate is at a 35-year low.

Since adopting “shall issue” laws, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia have had unprecedented decreases in violent crime ranging from 26 to 53 percent.

Henigan also claimed to have 33,000 signatures on his anti-Starbucks online petition, which can be signed by anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. But in a country of five million carry permit holders, up to 80 million gun owners, and 300 million people, Brady’s petition and $1.70 will get you …

No More Gun Rights and No More Gun Control
By TheEggman

Letters to the AmmoLand Editor: Got something on your mind? Let us know and you can see it here.

Virginia --(AmmoLand.com)- I am constantly reading on the Net and in the media about so-called “gun rights” and “gun control.”

Some examples;

“The final briefs seeking to shape the Supreme Court’s coming decision on the reach of the Second Amendment’s protection of gun rights suggested Friday that states might be free to violate other parts of the Bill of Rights…”

“The National Association for Gun Rights, often referred to as “NAGR”, was founded to assist the growing movement of pro-Second Amendment organizations, especially state-level gun rights groups.

“The National Rifle Association is the largest gun rights lobbying organization in the United States.”

On one hand, we preach that guns are mere machines, inanimate objects and tools. On the other, we appear to be attempting to give ‘rights’ to these inanimate machines.

I submit to you a request; that we remove the phrase “gun rights” from our vocabulary and replace it with the more human, and more accurate, “gun-owner rights.”

The First Amendment does not guarantee rights to printing presses as machines; it guarantees the rights of people to use printing presses, radios, televisions and the Internet without restriction.

The Second Amendment guarantees no rights to guns themselves, as they are mere machines. However, it does guarantee the right of the people to keep and bear them.

The psychology behind what may appear as a minor ‘grammatical nit’ should be clear.

It is relatively easy for most people to hate an object. You can make up lies about an object, demonize an object and attempt to regulate and control objects. You can do so without fear of insulting the object, hurting its feelings, being sued by the object or facing any repercussions, it’s just a defenseless, soulless object.

When we replace gun rights with gun-owner rights, however, the issue becomes personal. Where many people and politicians [as opposed to people] find it easy and guilt-free to demonize guns as objects, it is far more difficult to for them to demonize a large segment of the population, gun-owners, as people.

Laws can not control inanimate objects, only what law-abiding persons do with those objects. Therefore, it’s technically not gun control, or a war against guns, it’s gun owner control, and a war against gun owners.

So let us end this futile battle for so-called, non-existent gun rights and gun control, and renew the charge in support of the very real and very important rights of the people who own defensive and recreational firearms.

It may seem like a grammatical nit, but impressions are everything.

That’s my opinion, and you’re welcome to it!