Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign is at it again.
I have no problem with Helmke being upset about Jim Brady and other people who are killed or injured. But it doesn’t help his case any that he lies and distorts the situation. Here are some examples:
Almost two million dangerous people have been stopped from buying a gun since 1993.
Wrong. The correct statement is, “Almost two million people have been stopped from buying a gun via a licensed gun dealer since 1993.”
The first point to make is that we don’t know how many of those that were stopped were not actually dangerous. Is someone who failed to pay their taxes 30 years ago and has committed no crime since that felony convictions a dangerous person today? Or what of the black guy who committed the felony, 40 years ago, of being in possession of a deck of cards which had pictures of naked white women on them? Are they dangerous? In both cases they would have been stopped from buying a gun and Helmke includes them in his numbers.
The second point to make about this claim is that just because a truly “dangerous person” was stopped from purchasing a gun at a licensed dealer doesn’t mean he or she didn’t get a gun via the black market a few minutes or hours later.
The third point to make about this claim is there is no evidence this law has made the general population safer. Helmke measures success in terms of people blocked from purchases not in terms of making society safer. Answer Just One Question Paul.
They can buy guns without a background check from “law-abiding citizens” like Timothy McVeigh, who used his gun show sale profits to blow up the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and kill 168 innocent people. The killers at Columbine were outfitted at a gun show.
McVeigh could have used profits from a dry cleaning business or maintaining the web site of the Brady Campaign to blow up buildings. That he legally made money at gun shows is irrelevant to his criminal activities. Helmke attempts to make a subtle guilt by association claim here. But the guns shows McVeigh attended do not share responsibility for the bombing anymore than Al Gore does for Ted Kaczynski’s bombings.
The Columbine killers didn’t need gun shows to obtain their long guns. The elder of the two psychopaths was old enough to purchase long guns on their own at any firearms dealer. Again, Helmke is attempting to make the innocent appear guilty by association.
Now radicals proudly carry assault rifles to visits by President Obama, and the current holder of Jim’s old job says it’s just fine, and they’re not at all worried.
Wrong. It was an ordinary semi-automatic sporting rifle. It was not an assault rifle.
He leaves out the fact that the people with the firearms were not even within eyesight of President Obama, did not engage in any threatening behavior and broke no laws.
And I find it very telling that he uses the term “radical” to describe someone exercising both specific enumerated rights to free speech and keep and bear arms.
He concludes with:
… we’re far from being as safe as we could be.
True. But Helmke and the Brady Campaign have a proven track record of advocating laws that accomplish nothing but creating an impediment to people exercising their rights with no increase in public safety. And I guess the trauma of this headline from msnbc was just too much for Helmke to remember to include in his post, Record numbers now licensed to pack heat–Firearms deaths fall as millions obtain permits to carry concealed guns.
Helmke can’t be trusted to tell the truth or the whole story. That would endanger his job at the Brady Campaign where the truth doesn’t fit their agenda.
