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The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is the most media-friendly of gun control organizations. If you’re a journalist writing a story about a someone who got shot, just ring up Director of Communications Caroline Brewer (202-289-5769) and you’ll have a “lax gun laws are to blame” stat and quote to end your piece before you put down the phone. Here’s one closing out today’s Seattle Times story Documents: Boy got gun during visit with mother . . .

In the latest rating by the Brady Campaign, a national gun control advocacy group, Washington scored no points in the child safety category.

“Washington state is a loosely regulated state when it comes to firearms,” said Gregory Roberts, executive director of Washington Cease Fire, a Brady Campaign affiliate.

Of course, that’s local angle stuff—tacked onto a story from the AP about “a 9-year-old boy who brought a gun to a Washington state elementary school, wounding a young classmate when the gun accidentally went off.” You know “discharged from his backpack.” For some reason, the DA wants to blame the child rather than the gun. Go figure. Sarcasm off.

I digress. My main point: The Brady Campaign gets an inordinate amount of metaphorical ink despite the fact that its leader, one Dennis Henigan, has had a messy reality divorce.

Normally, Dennis hides his semi-psychotic break with dubious stats and vague proposals. Today’s he’s broken cover to reveal to the world—well the Huffington Post—his relatively fragile mental state or, more charitably, his org’s latest gun control agenda.

The intel comes from a HuffPo post entitled Calderon’s Billboard of Crime Guns, and What It Means. Dennis is riffing on the less-than-entirely-professional-looking “No More Weapons” billboard recently erected by the Mexican government on the U.S. border (click here for TTAG’s take):

The solution to gun trafficking to Mexico is also the solution to gun trafficking within the U.S.: stronger federal gun laws. [Their emphasis] At the very least, high-firepower assault weapons and assault clips should be banned, background checks should be required for all gun sales, uniform limits should be placed on bulk sales of handguns, and greater authority should be given to federal law enforcement to shut down the dealers who aid and abet the traffickers.

“Background checks should be required for all gun sales”? Like they aren’t now? Oh wait; Denis is talking about private firearms sales. You know; the so-called “gun show loophole where one law-abiding person can sell another law-abiding person a gun without government intervention.

Denis wants those sales under federal supervision, just as they are for knives, fertilizer, baseball bats and other dangerous or potentially dangerous weapons. Yes, that’ll work. ‘Cause a criminal buying a gun from a private seller would submit to a background check, right? And then he or she’d fail! And be reported! And be arrested! Just as they aren’t with the gun dealers FBI background check system.

Of course, that’s why criminals don’t buy guns from gun dealers—unless the ATF tells the dealer to let the sale go through (for reasons we still don’t fully understand).  By the same token, if a criminal didn’t submit to a background check, no one would sell them a gun. ‘Cause that would be illegal. And if someone did sell a criminal a gun, the bad guy and seller would be easier to catch because then it would be illegal. Well, illegaler. As it’s already a crime to sell a convicted criminal a gun.

See how that doesn’t work? There’s such a major disconnect between Denis’ theory and its [thank God theoretical] implementation that his screed kinda leaves you wondering if Hennigan is even capable of doing the mental math. As in intellectually “challenged.”

You will also note that the gun grabbers’ champion has moved from a jihad against poorly defined “assault weapons” to a call for a complete ban on “high firepower assault weapons” (following-up on the transition from “high-capacity magazines” to “assault clips”).

It’s also well worth recognizing that The Brady Veep has transitioned from supporting an executive order (held up in the courts) requiring 8500 or so border state gun dealers to report multiple long gun sales within 24 hours of purchase, to “uniform” limits on “bulk sales of handguns.”

Pardon my internetese, but WTF does that mean? What is a “bulk sale”? When did handguns become the central issue in America’s inherently leaky government-approved arms sales to the Mexican military and police? Sorry. I mean, [alleged] U.S. gun store collusion with Mexican gun smugglers?

Meanwhile, you’ll also excuse me if the vague phrase “greater authority” combined with the words “federal law enforcement” scare the you-know-what out of me.

Let’s talk tunnel vision. Hennigan’s gun control polemic completely ignores the fact that the feds already tried to stem the so-called “Iron River” of guns flowing from U.S. gun stores to Mexican drug thugs. You know; Fast and Furious. Just for fun, let’s call the ATF’s “botched sting” Uncle Sam’s “path of least resistance” plan.

For gun traffickers, there should be no more “path of least resistance” from American gun shops to Mexico, or to American cities and towns. Trafficking of assault weapons and handguns out of American gun shops is not just a Mexican tragedy. It is an American tragedy as well.

See what I did there? I wonder if Mr. Henigan will catch that, displaying as he does a genuine talent for seeing what he wants to see, and completely ignoring the rest.

Here’s the real American tragedy: advocates who address an important issue like gun rights without putting forward anything remotely resembling a coherent argument. And the fact that media gives these illogical intelligentsia air time.

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40 COMMENTS

  2. “…we could use an organization dedicated to preventing gun violence. It’s a laudable goal, whose realization could encompass anti-gang activities, school-based gun safety education and armed self-defense…”

    Actually, we have several organizations dedicated to “preventing gun violence”. These include the NRA (school safety classes and armed self-defense), the SAF and JPFO (armed self-defense), Boy Scouts, 4-H (safety) and several others. Admittedly, they are not deeply involved in anti-gang activities, since they feel that there are enough taxpayer-supported police agencies involved in that issue. The FBI already works on anti-gang activities (except Mexican drug cartels who need weapons to enhance the administration’s under-the-radar gun control efforts) so maybe we could get the FBI involved in teaching school safety classes (probably shouldn’t leave that to the DEA) and armed self-defense for civilians (and ICE agents). I am sure Janet N would agree.

  3. The amazing powers of reasoning and logic that enable a self-proclaimed expert on gun violence to solve the problem of a 9 year old bringing a gun to school and accidentally shooting someone by demanding background checks, assault weapon bans, and high capacity magazine bans are beyond the scope of my humble intellect.

    • But wait! There’s a law against guns on campuses! How in the world could this have happened?!?

      we need to make it ILLEGELER for kids to bring on campus and make it illegal for people with kids to get hold of these tools of murder and mayhem..
      something must be done!!

  4. We call the Brady Morons “gun grabbers,” but really, they aren’t. They’re money grabbers. They’re in it for the cash. Most of said cash comes from the Joyce Foundation, but some trickles in from the wooly-headed idiots who drink the Brady Kool-aid. So, no, Henigan isn’t insane. He’s a money-grubbing, lying scumbag, but he’s not insane.

  5. “The gun discharged after the boy slammed his backpack down on a desk, the documents said.”

    from the same article

    • My theory on that would be this: the trigger was hooked on something and the action of slamming the backpack down caused the gun to shift, resulting in a trigger pull. There was a case like this last year where a woman had a negligent discharge with a revolver she was carrying in her purse. No one was hurt in that incident, but she put a bullet in a check stand in a Safeway and obviously it was just dumb luck.

      Lessons: 1) it’s probably not good for nine-year-olds to have guns in their backpacks, and 2) never carry weapons with the trigger guard exposed.

      • I home carry and in my search for the idael home carry gun i tried to do some research on “drop fires”. Basically from what i found (and my limited capacity to interpret it):

        A)most “drop fires” result from people trying to grab their guns and consequently pulling the trigger

        BUT
        B) even a modern gun with a hammer block, if dropped from the proper height and at the right angle (muzzle first so the force are transmitteted vertically on the firing pin), even a modern gun can go off. I will grant that the physics involved and the circumstances required are so extreme that the scenario is very very unlikely.

        What say the A.I.?

        possible? paranoid fantasy?

        I’m firmly in the “guns just dont go off camp”

      • I tend to agree that something must have hit the trigger, and yes, the incident is entirely bizarre. California legal handguns all have to pass drop tests, which include muzzle down, on the hammer, and more, from 14 feet to a concrete surface. All modern firearms have at least several internal safeties to prevent discharges unless the trigger is pulled, and H&K is one of those manufacturers. I did read that the safety was off, and looking at H&K’s various iterations of the HK45, I suspect this was a single action only trigger, because all of their dual action safeties have a built in decocker.

        The criminal charges this child will face have more to do with unlawful possession of a firearm and bringing a firearm to school. The “third degree assault” is, I believe, as assault arising from an accidental or negligent act.

        The rest of the story is sad and disturbing. This boy had been living with his grandmother until she died, and then was living with his uncle. He’d told friends that he was planning on running away, and was going to take his father’s gun with him for protection. Instead he took his mother’s gun while on a weekend visitation. What kind of a family dynamic results in a child living with neither of his parents????

  6. From the standpoint of Henigan and his compatriots, nine-year-olds are now their new target audience. They want nine-year-olds to be able to meet with Congress, go to college, run for President, travel the world, and accomplish all of this at nine-years-old. One of the greatest issues facing this country is that many of the individuals in positions of power and influence, such as Mr. Henigan and his supporters, have the maturity of a nine-year-old and are shucking their own responsibility to act efficiently and think clearly .

      • I actually checked her out on LinkedIn and we are connected at the 3rd level. She is not bad looking but a little older than I would like (say mid-40’s). Besides, my wife may not go for it, but what the hell. I travel back and forth to DC enough, it may be worth a shot. 🙂

  8. Really shouldn’t watch that after eating, causes nausea.
    I love the part about dreaming of peace and serenity on college campuses. What alternate universe does this man live in?

  9. He didn’t mention the grenades and rocket launchers, stuff like that? How long are we going to be subjected to the ongoing horror of the unregulated sale of these items!

  11. Henigan and his crew may like to hold ‘galas,’ but they completely miss the essential change in American reality since the early 1960’s which has powered and will power the increase in armed self-defense measures: drugs, gang-culture, schools which turn out illiterate graduates, governments which encourage quick-fixes to everything rather a culture of self-improvement, self-study, and self-discipline, and the glorification of bad examples just because they sell movie tickets and CD’s. If they wished to encourage safer America, they would take the profit out of currently-illegal drugs. They would divert half the recent increase in security money to the residential rehab of drug addicts. In the meantime, Henigan can forget the dream that middle-america will “take a beating for the Henigan fantasy.” You take it, Henigan. Let your family take the rape or pipe to the head. Just leave the rest of us out. Go focus on the real problem. Stop riding the fascist paranoia of a few anti-gun foundations to pump your pension fund at our expense.

  12. Newsflash, Mr. Henigan – Utopia is nice to think about and to talk about, but it simply DOES NOT EXIST AND NEVER WILL.

  13. Trafficking of assault weapons and handguns out of American gun shops is not just a Mexican tragedy.
    Why mess with the gun shops when you can get the real deal from our government assistance programs.
    Hey. anybody hear that Hillary wants to arm the Syrian Rebels?
    A river of guns to Syria!

  14. I love the Mexican “no more guns sign”.

    Why haven’t any clever young folks put up some big signs next to it facing the other way that say “no more drugs” or “no more illegal immigrants” or maybe even “No more money or guns from us to fund your failing military in it’s pathetic attemp at controlling a nationwide drug war and it’s successful plan to oppress your citizens into fearful servitude”

    That last one may need a bigger sign.

  15. I went to his Huffpo article and found it interesting that even on that website, the majority of the comments I saw were heartily against what he wrote. A minority indeed.

  16. Perhaps because the child was so young and small, this was another example of those .9mm weapons?

  17. I would just like to point out to Henigan that by definition all firearms, and indeed all tools, implements and weapons when used for anything other than their intended purpose (and even this is debatable when we start talking about the real value of deterrence) by definition become “Assault weapons.”

    Assault (legal definition, sourced from legal-dictionary.com) “At Common Law, an intentional act by one person that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent harmful or offensive contact”

    So we get back to the anti-gun lobby’s basic problem with guns, i.e. they are afraid of guns!

    After all what makes an “assault weapon?” Judging by past statements and by the kinds of illogical standards which are successfully advocated for and applied by the people that Henigan represents we’re basically talking about anything that makes the gun look “scarier.”

    I’m not Sherlock Holmes by any measure but I think that I’ve laid out some solid logic here…

  19. No, Dennis wasn’t quiet clear on Brady’s vision, here it is:
    They believe in an America where you are totally disarmed. Where you are at the mercy of a gun toting, or ax wielding, or muscle-bond bad guy who can do anything he wants to you. Or, you are at the mercy of your government, in a gun-free society where only the government or the criminals posses the means of self-defense. Guns were outlawed in Nazi Germany, the USSR, China, Cambodia, much of sub-Sahara Africa, and presently Syria. How did that work out? Dennis doesn’t trust law-abiding citizens, but he trust the UN, our government, etc. And apparently, he trusts the criminals. MORON.

  20. “See what I mean? “Background checks should be required for all gun sales.” Like they aren’t now?”

    They aren’t now. Background checks are required in most states only for sales by licensed dealers. In most states, anyone who is not a licensed dealer can sell a gun without performing a background check. I have purchased several firearms from individuals in their homes or after arranging to meet at a parking lot. No background check was performed and it was all perfectly legal. Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Brady Campaign don’t like that such sales are taking place and want to make them illegal.

    • It took 37 comments for someone to point that out. This is one honest group.

      I thought Henigan’s speech was pretty good. I guess it hit home for many of you for that very reason, it made sense. Your response is to nit-pick at it and attack him personally.

      Another thing no one mentioned is the speech is about a year old. Robert must have wanted to get on his soap box for a little lesson in the old spin.

  21. BSG75….are you suggesting that as a PRIVATE citizen, that I should NOT be able able to sell what, at least THEORETICALLY, is MY PRIVATE property (in this case a firearm) without government approval? Puleeze…..and under title 18, CH44 of the gun control act, it is already ilegal for me to sell to anyone who is or that I have reason to suspect is a criminal. At what point in my life–where and when does federal control over my life cease?—Our founders would have overthrown such an intrusive government LOOOOONG, LOOOOONG before it had usurped as much extraconstitutional powers as it has! (Please read the declaration of independence on that issue) Shall not be infringed means that there can be NO regulation by government. The remedy for abuse of the right to keep and bear arms (like murder or armed robbery) is to punish the OFFENDER–and ONLY the offender. The 2A is designed to protect the (natural and pre-existing) right of the people to overthrow a tyrannical government.

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