“This election is about the kind of future we, as Americans, want. Sarah and I hope the Democrats will want to work even harder for a safer America, with a lot less gun violence, because they understand, as President Clinton did many years ago, that we are better than 32 gun murders every day, and 100,000 Americans shot every year. As I urged the Republican delegates last week, I urge you also this week to help your nominee, President Obama, by telling him not to be afraid to do what is right for this country, which we all love. Tell him to join the national conversation that’s taking place on WeAreBetterThanThis.org, and in millions of homes across the nation, and present to the American people his solutions to prevent gun deaths and injuries.” – James Brady’s message to DNC delegates

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55 COMMENTS

  1. Hey Jim,

    If my neighbors and I are forced to give up our guns then how are we to inspire fear in criminals and keep those thugs from breaking into our homes and assaulting us on the streets? Thugs will have little fear of being hurt by an unarmed people. BTW Jim, if you are unaware, thugs are uncivilized savages and are not the type to attend a liberal hug-festival. Big secret: People and animals generally do not attack a stronger foe or one that might seriously hurt them in a struggle.

  3. There are many, many more people killed by clinical errors than by firearms every year.
    DNC, please tell the American Medical Association, “We are better than this.”

    • Not really the same argument. Medical ERRORS are just that errors. Dirt bags with ILLEGALLY obtained guns use them with INTENT.

      • Deaths by improperly written dosages or the careless swipe of a scalpel are no less tragic, and are far more numerous and preventable than “gun deaths.”

        • “Careless swipes of a scalpel”?? If you have never made a mistake or an error in judgment then keep arguing the issue. When a factory worker makes an error your car door squeaks or the panel is crooked. It is still an error. Medical errors are magnified due to the nature of the profession. I just get tired of the inaccurate “medical errors” and gun death analogy. Most physicians don’t start the day off thinking “who can I kill today?”
          A better analogy is auto accidents from irresponsible drinking or cell phone use.

      • Yeah but that 100,00 number includes accidental deaths, which are, like medical errors, accidents.

        It also includes suicides. The US has a middling suicide rate, globally speaking (lower than countries with severe gun control), it is a pretty safe assumption that most if not all of those gun suicides would just use pills, heights, razors or cars.

        I believe that number all includes DGUs and police shootings too.

        • Not only that, but that number is completely fictitious.
          The number is 31K, just over 50% of which are suicides, of the remaining, 3% are accidents and 80% are drug related violence. That leaves roughly 8-9K actual intentional gun homicides.
          To put that in perspective – just over 40K people a year are killed by motor vehicles. Of those, between 5-6k are non-occupant bystanders!
          I think we should ban all of these Assault Cars!
          (numbers from the U.S. Census, publicly available)

        • He said shot, not killed, and 100,000 is a conservativ number. Fact is most people who are shot survive. Just like he did.

    • Or tell us we can do without the AMA, or that the practice of medicine should be legally limited to old technology…

  4. Got a burr under my saddle this morning. This seems like as good a place as any to rant.

    We need to change how our elected representatives operate. That means sending someone different to D.C., this time for real. We need doctors and school teachers. We need engineers, mathematicians and physicists. We need small business owners, construction workers, and the guy from the auto shop. We need the single mom who works two jobs just to make ends meet, and the divorced dad who never gets to see his kids. We need the guy who works the soup kitchen, the woman who stands out in the cold to ring the bell for the Salvation Army. We need people of all races, all walks of life, all orientations and all creeds (to include “none”). What we do not need, and what we’ve had far too much of, is a bunch of old, fat, white lawyers who think that government should (or even can) solve every little problem that we as a country face. Knock that sh!t off, America.

    • We need term limits for Congress.

      Politics and public administration should be a public service people engage in to ‘give back’ after a successful career in the private sector. It should not be the successful career.

      Unfortunately, this would require an Amendment to implement.

      • We have term limits. Two years for every representative, six years for every senator, and four years for the president and vice president. And, yes, of course, I know what you mean, and the “public servant for life” thing bugs me too, but if voters were less apathetic (hell, if the majority of people who could vote actually DID vote), we would not be in the mess. If we want to turn the bums out, we can. We just have to vote.

        • we mean limits on the number of terms. forced turnover would be a benefit because it would give more variety to vote for when we turn out to vote instead of incumbent vs one new guy, particularly for independent voters who can’t vote in primaries in their state.

      • Can we limit them (and the president) to zero terms each?
        That would improve things dramatically.

    • That would be nice. The problem is that all those members of the productive class would either never want to get involved with the filth of politics or would quickly become enamoured with their newfound power, influence, and wealth. The fundemental flaw of “our” system is that it is designed to use violence, force, and coercion to control, intimidate, and dominate others. Becoming a politician requires a special kind of sociopathy.

      • +1000

        Honest people are busy being productive. People who know how to make material worth in the world are busy doing so. Who has the time or the energy to waste professionally conning people other than the useless but powerful?

    • What we actually need is compulsory service in Congress: every citizen of voting age gets their name put in a pot, and we draw the new Congress in a lottery.

      • I’ve thought of this before too. I think they should use the same pot of names for congress AND military service. That would have an interesting effect.

        • You could volunteer for the selective service for congress/military. Then when we needed soldiers and congresspeople they pull names from the same hat for whatever we happen to need that day!

          😉

    • Given the intrusion into their personal lives that politicians face, plus the constant need to beg for money, I’ll pass. I understand what you’re saying. It’s just that the current approach to politics turns off most decent people.

  5. Gun murders? 32 guns are murdered each day! That is awful. I am NOT for that. I also hate gun violence, like when they melt down or destroy innocent firearms.

  6. Meanwhile the man who shot him, Reagan and the SS man is in a nice facility getting free care from the taxpayer. He has a girlfriend so he gets laid from time to time. First person in history to shoot a president and be found not guilty for it.

    Jim, you and Sarah should be focused on the system that allows such things to happen instead of disarming America.

    • Dunno what these other two are getting in a twist about. What’s wrong with wishing that the enemy of your freedoms, rights, and personal/family safety didn’t exist? You’re telling me you’d shed a tear if Feinstein got smacked by a bus?

      You don’t think antis wish for more deaths, especially of gun owners, ever day?

      • You’re telling me you’d shed a tear if Feinstein got smacked by a bus?

        Yes, I would. I want her repudiated, discredited, thrown out of office. Not dead, and certainly not martyred by a ‘lone nut’.

        You don’t think antis wish for more deaths, especially of gun owners, ever day?

        I aspire to be a better man than my opponents.

        • Agreed.

          Death, certainly as a “martyr” to the anti-gun cause, is too easy. I like your selected fate for her much better.

      • Barring actual armed conflict, I would first want to win them over as allies, but failing that, I would wish defeat on my enemies, not death.

        • To quote Yoda, “That is why you fail”.

          Take a look a history – you don’t win by being friendly to your enemies.

        • @Totenglocke
          Where is this historical evidence? Turning an enemy into a friend has always been the most effective way of reducing international conflict. Subjugation is expensive, and doomed to fail. But a mutually beneficial friendship (like George Washington espoused as foreign policy) is profitable for both, and costly to betray.

          Unfortunately some enemies, such as Ms. Feinstein, have only an infinitesimal chance of ever becoming allies (she might become more gun friendly during a zombie apocalypse, but I’m not certain), but there are probably many people following this blog who used to be anti-gun.

  8. Gun crime is overwhelmingly committed by a relatively small percentage of the population. This segment of the population has been encouraged by both the government and the media to reject proper society, to reject the notion of assimilation. This, I believe, enables their nihilistic, sociopathic levels of violence.

    Gun control is a farce, and I have to believe these people know this, and are just using the talk about safety to further their ultimate goal, which is a fascist state where everyone is subservient to the government.

    James Brady is in a wheelchair. Seems to me some punk with a baton who encountered him on the street could make quick work of ol’ Jimmy—-except I bet he and Sarah travel with armed bodyguards. Most Americans can’t hire someone with a gun to protect them.

  9. Ugh, makes me sick to my stomach hearing him not only call himself an American, but to falsely claim he loves the country. Yup, he loves it so much, he wants to destroy its foundations and rob people of their rights.

  10. brady has the right to speak his mind as we all do. i favor term limits and taxpayer funded elections. each qualified candidate gets x amount of funding and nothing more can be spent on their run. it’s a start.

    • By a strict libertarian interpretation of rights, it does not.
      However, by that sort of interpretation, if he acts to abrogate your rights, you are immediately justified to use appropriate defensive force.

  12. With thousands of Police Officers, dozens of other government agencies with armed personnel, Washington D.C. may have the most armed people employed by government per square mile anywhere short of a military base.
    Add to this some of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S. and the Brady Campaign’s home office being there, a reasonable person would naturally think that the 68 or so square miles in the Metro D.C. area would be one of the safest places in America.

    • Most military bases aren’t armed (domestically at least). That’s why they’re such easy targets for mass shooters.

  13. This is the first time I’ve realized that poor Jim Brady suffered serious brain damage during the Reagan assassination attempt. The pity I feel for him and his family does NOT, however, justify any conclusion as irrational as national disarmament.

    If Americans are going to allow themselves to be disarmed then the inevitable future consequences are going to be far worse than the original problem they sought to correct. The truth is that people are violent; and there ARE evil men in this world. Some of them are street criminals; and others are prominent national politicians.

    Until the Good Lord makes cats without claws, and dogs without teeth, people should advantage themselves by continuing to go armed. One of life’s sad realities is that THE STRONG ALWAYS PREY UPON THE WEAK. Honest politicians, honest government, and a moral society have nothing to fear from an armed citizenry. It’s only dishonest men and evil governments that stand to benefit most from a largely helpless and vulnerable general population.

    Among many other prominent Americans: George Washington thought so; Thomas Jefferson thought so; Thomas Paine thought so; and so did Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. I think so, too.

  14. Brady calls on delegates to help their nominee work for gun control. What he means is that Democrats will help Obama leave office this November if they follow this plan. Supporting gun control is a good way to lose an election in most parts of the country. The Brady Bunch knows this, which is why they work for underhanded measures and why we in the gun culture have to watch them constantly.

  15. James Brady is entitled to his opinion, and I am entitled to mine. He wants to disarm honest people, and I want to tell him to go f^ck himself.

  16. They replied much better than I could over at The War On Guns site:

    http://waronguns.blogspot.com/2012/09/better.html

    Yes, as gun owners, WE ARE better than this (crap from the gun-control lobby).
    – We don’t use lies, half-truths, misleading terminology, innuendo, and cherry-picked anecdotal evidence to further our cause.
    – We don’t want to force everyone else to not do something that frightens us, especially when we are so ignorant of the whole subject.
    – We don’t ignore or intentionally mis-state the facts of history and society, or the lessons they teach us.
    – We don’t want to take away anyone’s god given and constitutionally protected rights.
    – … and I could go on and on. You get the point.

    WE ARE BETTER than all of those gun grabber organizations, because we’re right, and we don’t have to do anything underhanded to prove it.

  17. I followed the links in the introductory text, and I spent a few minutes at both web sites. Both are purely propaganda machines, with no room for opposing views.

    The “WeAreBetterThanThis.org” site allows you to tell your story or send them a comment or add you name to a petition, but I could not find a way to view the ‘stories’ or comments or even see the number of names on their petition. Therefore all the information (indoctrination) flows from the web site author out to the viewer, nothing from viewer to viewer.

    The other web site (blog.bradycampaign.org) is a blog in name only, because it does not allow any comments from the viewers either. Every blog thread contains several articles written by board members of the Brady Campaign, with no means to comment on the articles.

    It appears that the gun-control community has become so desperate that they can’t even allow any comments on their web sites, for fear that an opposing argument might actually win out. I almost feel sorry for them. Actually, I can only hope that their total defeat will happen soon.

  18. Accidental death is pathetically small number and Suicide is not only a different subject…..but what we would do if we gave up our guns (heh heh). Now, if you remove the guetto gangbanger thugs (banger on banger) from the statistics, then you start to get real numbers.

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