Sixteen years after opponents of sensible gun laws argued that the Brady Law would be ineffective because criminals supposedly wouldn't buy guns from licensed dealers, we see almost two million blocked sales. We need to extend that success in blocking dangerous people from getting guns by requiring Brady checks on all gun sales and ensuring the appropriate records are in place.
Paul Helmke
President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
November 30, 2009
Brady Law at 16: A Public Safety Success Story
[Notice Helmke measures "success" in terms of blocked sales. Not in increased public safety. Also note that those 1.6 million attempted sales, if truly attempts by people not allowed to own firearms, were all Federal crimes and those people should be in Federal prisons. But, since the total Federal prison population (Table 2, pim08stt02.csv) is as below we know one or more of the following is true. A) The Federal prosecution rate is extremely low. And/or B) Those blocked sales should not have been blocked.
|
|
Number of prisoners |
|
|
|
|
| Region and jurisdiction |
12/31/2000 |
12/31/2006 |
6/30/2007 |
12/31/2007 |
6/30/2008 |
| U.S. Total/a |
1,391,261 |
1,569,945 |
1,594,611 |
1,598,242 |
1,610,584 |
|
Federal |
145,416 |
193,046 |
199,118 |
199,618 |
201,142 |
|
State/a |
1,245,845 |
1,376,899 |
1,395,493 |
1,398,624 |
1,409,442 |
If those blocked sales were actually crimes then why didn't Helmke call on the Obama administration to prosecute those crimes and increase public safety? Is a person who can't be trusted with a firearm someone you would trust with a kitchen knife, a baseball bat, or a can of gasoline and a book of matches?
Helmke is of the opinion the prevention of gun sales is an achievement to be proud of--even when there is no increase in public safety and convicted felons seeking firearms are not put in prison.
I can only conclude that Helmke's organization is, as many others have already noted, better named the "Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership".
The Brady Campaign--infringing a specific enumerated right since 1974. It is the 21st Century equivalent of the KKK.--Joe]