Paul Helmke does not know what he is talking about:

Congress allows dealers to destroy criminal background check records after 24 hours, preventing the ATF from learning how well shops are following the Brady background checks requirements.

Dealers don’t have background check records. The FBI does. The dealers aren’t “allowed” to destroy the records, the FBI is required to. The rest of the sentence becomes nonsensical with the corrections applied.

But that doesn’t matter because I can’t even make even sense of some of the things the Brady Campaign (soon to be ex-) President says when there aren’t any factual corrections to be made:

It is time for Washington’s politicians to look out for average people who do not deserve to have unethical gun dealers – and the gun lobby that shields them — pushing illegal guns into their neighborhoods.

Which guns are illegal? Guns the spontaneously disassemble by the time you fire your 100th round? Guns that go full auto and don’t stop when you release the trigger?

And how does a gun dealer push them into a neighborhood? Does this mean the dealer pulls up in your cul-de-sac and pushes a pallet of guns without serial numbers out of his truck onto the pavement? No gun dealer does that—that’s more like something our government would do.

If I had a list of engineering “accomplishments” that were projects that failed to achieve their goals I wouldn’t be in the engineering profession for very long. But somehow the Brady Campaign doesn’t see it that way (or at least publically doesn’t want to admit it) when it comes to the failures of Paul Helmke. Their list of “accomplishments” strike me as failures or irrelevancies:

• responding to the decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald in a way that makes legislation implementing common sense restrictions on guns more likely in the future; [FAIL! It’s now three years post Heller and no significant gun control legislation has passed Heller or McDonald addressed.]
• helping pass the NICS Improvement Act in 2007, which law has already helped spur the addition of another million records to the Brady background check system; [IRRELEVANT! The NRA supported this legislation.]
• engaging a new generation of victim advocates, such as Virginia Tech survivor Colin Goddard, in the fight for sensible gun laws; [IRRELEVANT! How many are of the “new generation” are voting anti-gun?]
• supporting the filming, release and distribution of two new documentaries on the gun issue — Living for 32 and Gunfight; [IRRELEVANT! How many people have watched it and changed their position? The numbers are statistically insignificant.]
• pursuing an aggressive media strategy, including national television and radio, as well as local, newspapers, magazines, and web outlets; [FAIL!  My pathetic YouTube videos get more traffic than the Brady Campaign videos do.]
• the Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence initiative; [FAIL! I have never heard of it. If I haven’t heard of it then almost for certain the number of people who have heard of it and acted upon it is vanishingly small.]
• beginning relationships with professional athletes such as Plaxico Burress; [FAIL! I can’t see this as an accomplishment for either party in the relationship. It’s a suspect and very odd relationship that will go nowhere.]
• advancing Brady’s “assault clips” campaign and targeted district strategy; [FAIL! This campaign has achieved zero legislatively and even if it were to get passed by some legislature it probably will not pass the “in common use” test of the Heller decision.]
• enlisting 100+ sponsors for bills to close the gun show loophole and ban assault clips; [FAIL! This legislation didn’t even come up for a vote let alone get lip service from the President.]
• implementing successful defensive efforts in the states to stop “guns on campus” as well as helping pass strong pro-active legislation in places like California; [FAIL! We made several steps forward and zero backward.The right to self-defense on campus was passed in several states. It was not repealed in any.]
• leading the Starbucks “open carry” campaign; [FAIL! Starbucks told them to mind their own business.]
• steering the organization through the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression; [FAIL! Income is down by how much? It’s so much that Helmke barely has enough to pay his salary and keep the lights on in his office.]
• supporting the writing and promotion of a new book on the gun issue, Lethal Logic by Dennis Henigan; [FAIL! The book is full of half-truths from the front cover on and everyone knows it. And in the book Henigan admits it is difficult to determine whether the presence of guns leads to high crime rates.]
• getting more attention from the White House, Administration, as well as many leaders on the Hill than in the past decade; [FAIL! And what has the attention gain the Brady Campaign in terms of getting their legislative agenda passed? Zip.]
• budgeting for new investment in donors that resulted in thousands of new donors and supporters. [FAIL! Where’s the money?]

As reported by AntiTango, LInoge, and Sebastian Joan Peterson has outlined what facts she will and will not allow in the comments to her blog. She would do well to remember what Gandhi had to say on the topic.

In a letter to the editor in The Columbus Dispatch Greg Ward whines:

Thursday’s Dispatch carried the news that state lawmakers have passed legislation allowing concealed-carry permit holders to carry guns in bars, restaurants and some stadiums, as well as making it easier for weapons to be carried in a vehicle.

As if that weren’t, in itself, troubling news to the police, restaurant owners and employees and other people with common sense, there appears to be far worse news on the horizon: A Republican legislator has introduced a bill that would eliminate the need for gun permits “and allow anyone who ‘qualifies for a permit’ — but doesn’t have one — to carry a concealed weapon.”

The wording begs the question: How will our law-enforcement officials know if a person “qualifies” to carry a gun unless that person has had to submit his qualifications to be judged?

It’s really very, very simple. But apparently Ward has the mindset of “Unless specifically allowed it is forbidden.” I thought this mindset went out the door with the collapse of the USSR but apparently there are still people stuck in the past.

The individual does not have to get permission from a LEO and being “judged” before being “allowed” to carry a concealed firearm. It is probably beyond the capacity of Ward to view things from the constitutionally mandated view of “innocent until proven guilty” and “that which is not prohibited is allowed” but I’ll explain it for him anyway.

Law enforcement cannot search people to see if they have a concealed weapon unless there is probable cause to search them or there are special circumstances that require a search for the safety of the officer. Hence the LEO will do the background check after having doing a legal search and finding a concealed weapon. At that time the individual will provide their identity and the LEO will do the background check.

There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? I’m betting Ward still won’t be able to grasp it. It’s an alien mindset for far too many people.

Isn’t extraordinarily odd that Plaxico would team up with the Brady Campaign? There are two basic reasons I have to conclude this:

1. If he had a class in basic gun safety while in grade school like I did (I think it was in the 5th grade) he would have known to have used a holster. The Brady Campaign would (and do with the Eddy Eagle program) scream bloody murder if schools were to teach gun safety of any type.
2. He went to prison after violating repressive (and probably unconstitutional) laws against carrying a firearm in public. Had these laws not been in existence he might not have gone to jail (there might still be legitimate laws against reckless endangerment or discharging a firearm inside the city limits, etc.). The Brady Campaign supports these laws.

I find this very much like a person of color married to a Caucasian getting a divorce and supporting a white separatist group after getting beat up by members of the KKK for their choice of marriage partners.

Could he have “made a deal with the devil” to get paroled early?

As the NRA says, the Brady Campaign will say anything at anytime to get what they want:

Yesterday, however, the Brady Campaign spoke with a new enthusiasm for “states [and cities’] rights,” demanding that Congress “Let D.C. residents govern themselves,” while complaining “Every year we see members of Congress interfering with the fundamental American principle of self-government.” This nonsense follows the group’s opposition to limiting state and local power over the right to keep and bear arms through the Supreme Court’s McDonald v. Chicago decision last year.

The Brady Campaign should stop their hypocrisy and phony arguments. The notion that the group believes in the Tenth Amendment is laughable. Everyone knows that the group believes in restricting the right to keep and bear arms any way it can, with federal gun control, state gun control, local gun control, by executive regulation, by court decisions, by lawsuits designed to bankrupt gun manufacturers, and by any other means it can think of. Trying to cast itself as a defender of our country’s federal system, it only discredits itself even more than usual.

Is it that they have crap for brains or do they think everyone else is afflicted?

In other news their YouTube videos viewing statistics are telling:

• Beau Bridges Presents the Lifetime Achievement Award to Jim & Sarah Brady: Added 1 day ago, 6 views
• Sarah Brady at the 2011 Brady Center Gala in Washington, DC, Added 2 days ago, 10 views
• Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi Pays Tribute to the Work of Jim and Sarah Brady, Added 3 days ago, 31 views
• President Clinton remarks on Jim and Sarah Brady, Added 1 week ago, 86 views

Compare that to my video, Planting the Seeds for Gun Owner Rights in India , added 2 days ago with 124 views.

When some third tier, part time gun blogger in the middle of Idaho throws together a crude video of some people going shooting and gets 10 times the attention than a D.C. based organization with the ear of movie stars, the Speaker of the House, and a former U.S. president it’s a sure thing that Paul Helmke isn’t earning his 250K/year salary. They should just fold up shop or break out the Tequila while we maintain a suicide watch.