In yet another sign of how out of touch it is with how people interact in a civilized society, the National Rifle Association is apparently so wrapped up in its paranoid view of the world that it planted an undercover cameraman at our news conference at the National Press Club on Wednesday when the Brady Campaign released its annual Scorecard of State gun laws that can help reduce gun violence.
Paul Helmke
May 6, 2011
NRA Didn’t Have To Spy: Their Deadly Agenda Is Out
[I wasn’t aware that news conferences were intended to be secret and that if someone showed up without being specifically invited they were considered a “spy”.
I guess that shows how out of touch I am with how people interact in a civilized society as well. Or maybe is shows it is the Brady Campaign which is paranoid instead of the NRA.—Joe]
How do you attend a press conference undercover? Aren’t they public events, or at least intended to be eventually?
Does the Brady Campaign really want to drive away the only people who bothered to show up?
Damnit, Eseell beat me to it. There were a grand total of somewhere between two and four audience members in the room, and one of those was the photographer. Does the Brady Bunch really want their attendance numbers to be even smaller?
Also, are news conferences not public? Did the Brady Bunch have something to hide? Did they not want the message of their stupid-assed “scorecard” to get out? Do you have to have a ticket to attend?
Is Helmke nuts?
They’re not mad because the NRA showed up unannounced. They’re mad because they filmed the empty seats and showed the rest of the world what a pathetic joke the Brady Bunch are. They were counting on a controlled news release in which a sympathetic media would pass on their talking points. Instead, like their ideological brother Osama bin Laden, they are now revealed to the world as the weak horse (no offense intended toward weak horses).
Regardless of how many people were there, how is this any different than sending an undercover cameraman to a public event like a gun show and filming people exercising another specific enumerated right? Once again they show their bigotry and hypocrisy.
Who are the paranoid ones again?
@Ken: They’re not worried that the world will see the empty seats, they’re worried that the Joyce Foundation will see the empty seats. Next statement from Helmke will be that he had chickenpox and the NRA cameraman and the two persons shown were the only two attendees that had already had them…the rest sat farther back to be safe and the directional microphone on the camera did not pick up their deafening cheers.
so sending hidden cameras into gun shows along with your poster boy Goddard is not spying? Idiots.
Brady who?