Quote of the day–Paul Helmke

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]

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4 thoughts on “Quote of the day–Paul Helmke

  1. You also need to consider what a “blocked” sale is:

    Once, when I was buying a pistol, the salesman (using the computerized check) mis-typed the state abbreviation (or however the online form works) on my address, and the purchase came back ‘rejected’ (can’t sell a pistol out of state, of course). I’d be willing to bet large sums of money that even though he corrected the mistake and this sale went through 90 seconds later, this still ended up in Helmke’s stats as a “blocked” sale.

    Nothing even remotely illegal/suspicious/etc… just a garden variety typo.

  2. Would seem to be an inflated stat. If there are 2 million blocked sales, how many unblocked sales where there? I would anticipate a high enough number to be seen when you go to buy a gun. I spend some time around gun counters and I don’t recall ever seeing a blocked sale.

    I think Sam Clemens said there are Stats, Damn Stats and Lies.

  3. Would seem to be an inflated stat. If there are 2 million blocked sales, how many unblocked sales where there? I would anticipate a high enough number to be seen when you go to buy a gun. I spend some time around gun counters and I don’t recall ever seeing a blocked sale.

    I think Sam Clemens said there are Stats, Damn Stats and Lies.

  4. “You also need to consider what a “blocked” sale is:”
    It’s what you described, and in cases of prohibited persons, it is a guaranteed customer base for the black market. Someone being denied a sale in a gun store doesn’t mean they don’t get a gun, just like prohibition on certain drugs doesn’t mean they’re not manufactured, bought, sold, and used regularly. What we’re doing is transferring the business from the regular, above-board dealers to the crime syndicates, thereby encouraging and enriching the most aggressive criminal organizations while ensuring official corruption and disdain for law and order. Oh goody– chaos. In the case of guns, we’re also eroding the very notion of a protected right, and by extension, any and all protected rights. More chaos. That’s their goal. They feed off it. Chaos is the mother’s milk of totalitarianism.

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