Disappointed Brady Campaign lashes out at President Obama
March 1, 2010
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
One has to wonder how disappointed, or even enraged, have become the leaders of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in the past year. The news has not been good for them. Things have gotten so bad that the Brady Center is now reduced to attempting to coerce the Starbucks coffee chain into banning customers with legal guns.
The Brady rage against Starbucks, however, seems to be small potatoes as they vent their spleen against anyone who doesn’t take their advice, including the President of the United States.
The Obama Administration is just entering their second year in office and the Brady Campaign has already issued the President a failing “report card.”
Just 14 months ago, the leadership and major funding sources for the Brady Campaign were fairly dancing in the streets as the election of President Barack Obama was confirmed. The Brady Bunch and their big money contributors had vigorously supported the Democratic candidate, whose past record and campaign platform were squarely on the anti-gun, anti-self-defense side.
So delighted was the Brady Bunch with Obama’s victory and with the Democrat majority in Congress that they were literally salivating at the prospect of realizing so much of their agenda. Indeed, while the Bradys were rubbing their hands, Americans concerned about their gun rights were shivering in their boots—all the way to their favorite gun and ammunition stores.
The Brady Campaign staff immediately drafted their lengthy wish list for the incoming Obama Administration, a document that was made public on Dec. 18, 2008. Their wish list was long as they urged a President they expected to listen up when they urged him to “reverse the damage done during the Bush Administration.”
The whole document is rather long and laced with the usual Brady Campaign hyperbole. But here are the highlights, a blueprint for the anti-gun cause in the US and around the world.
- 1. Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment’s “unwarranted restrictions” on ATF, including repealing the restrictions on disclosure of crime gun data, repeal of the 24-hour Brady record destruction requirement, and repeal the prohibition on ATF’s power to require dealer inventory audits whenever they wish;
- 2. Repeal the new rules allowing concealed carry in national parks;
- 3. Repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act, so victims of criminal acts can sue the firearms industry out of business rather than the cockroaches that committed the crimes;
- 4. Extend the National Instant Criminal Check to all gun sales, including all gun show sales, and private sales;
- 5. Provide more funding to expand the kinds of prohibiting data available in the NICS system;
- 6. Deny firearms sales to anyone on the flawed “terrorist watch list;”
- 7. Prohibit gun possession by “violent misdemeanants;”
- 8. Prohibit gun possession for life for anyone convicted of a violent crime as a juvenile;
- 9. Strengthen and expand ATF authority to regulate dealers, and “crack down on corrupt dealers and fight gun trafficking;”
- 10. Restrict multiple handgun sales;
- 11. Require gunowners to report lost or stolen guns at a time certain;
- 12. Require gun dealers to adopt minimum security standards to prevent thefts;
- 13. Require manufacturers and dealers to perform background checks on all employees;
- 14. Prevent dealers from “liquidating their inventory without background checks” after their license has been revoked;
- 15. Require all new guns to have microstamping capability by a date certain;
- 16. Restrict “military-style weapons” by resurrecting and expanding the Clinton “assault weapons” ban;
- 17. Require consumer safety standards and “childproof features” for all firearms by turning the foxes of the Consumer Products Safety Commission loose in the firearms industry henhouse;
- 18. Require handgun owners to demonstrate minimum safety requirements with enhanced record keeping of handgun transfers, meaning registration of all handguns, and
- 19. Improve the national violent death reporting system data and restore “firearms research funding” for the anti-gun Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There is, of course, more detail available in the December 2008 letter to then President-elect Obama, which is available on the Brady Campaign website (bradycampaign.org).
But that was then. Now the Brady Campaign has taken off the gloves with Obama by issuing in January 2010 a 29-page document castigating the President for not delivering their anti-gun agenda. The cover of that Obama attack piece is reproduced in small size here. Notice, they gave the President all “F” grades and then they have the effrontery to call pro-gunners “extremists.”
Well, the ink of their latest document had barely curdled when they issued another attack on the President.
“Ignoring a campaign promise to ‘repeal the Tiahrt Amendment,’ the Obama Administration yesterday maintained, in its proposed budget for FY 2011, the Bush-era language that requires the destruction of most Brady background check records, bans the government from requiring gun dealers to fully account for firearms in their possession, and prohibits public access to crucial information about crime guns,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. He issued the following statement on the Administration’s failure to remove the gun lobby language from its budget proposal:
“We are disappointed that President Obama has failed again to propose repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment as he promised during his campaign,” the Feb. 2, 2010 Brady press release cried.
The Brady Campaign makes the mistake of attacking the President for not delivering their agenda at a time when Obama, and the country as a whole, have more serious concerns. The recession continues. The wars continue. The domestic and global economic dangers continue. And the political dangers for the White House and congressional Democrats continue.
Obama’s poll numbers continue to ski downward and the White House sees support for the Administration and its congressional majority at risk in the November 2010 off-year elections.
Independent voters now see Obama in a negative light by a nearly 2-1 margin, according to a new Marist College survey, while almost half of voters say he has failed to meet their expectations, the National Journal reported, but there is no evidence of linkage to the Brady Campaign’s complaints. Indeed, public opinion appears to be growing more favorable to gun rights.
Meanwhile, members of Congress should brace for a difficult election year, The Journal noted. 42% of registered voters said they would back their current member of Congress, while 44% said they would support someone else—a drop of 9 points in support of the incumbent in just two months.
Into this volatile political environment, the Brady Campaign has hurled its kerosene lantern of slash and burn politicking.
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