·11250 Waples Mill Road · Fairfax, Virginia 22030 ·800-392-8683
Posted on 06/14/2011 1:49:34 PM PDT by neverdem
| Brady Campaign...New Champion Of The Tenth Amendment |
| Friday, June 10, 2011 |
|
For more than 30 years, the Brady Campaign has demanded that the federal government impose gun bans, ammo bans, waiting periods, gun registration -- you name it -- with no regard for the states. In 1994, when the group was called Handgun Control, Inc., it said that its main "goal" was to "enact a comprehensive federal gun control policy." In January, the Brady Campaign endorsed Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-N.J.) bills proposing a federal law to prohibit Americans from possessing firearms on the basis of secret allegations, another federal law to regulate gun shows out of business, and another federal law to prohibit magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Etc., etc., etc. But when the states have exercised their powers, the Brady Campaign has usually been against it. The group has vigorously denounced dozens of state Right-to-Carry and other laws dedicated to protecting the right of people to use firearms to defend themselves. And last month, it vilified most states for refusing to impose one or another gun restriction. "Arizona, Alaska, and Utah do not have a single common sense gun law on their books [and] 31 states have few gun laws or none," the group whined. The only time the group supports a state gun law is when it restricts the right to arms. 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. |
The Brady Campaign is as shameless as Anthony Weiner.
The 10th Amendment does not trump the 2nd.
Brady is the National Vegetable and should be treated as such!
That's true, but I'd argue the two are not in conflict. The 10th says that there are powers forbidden to the States. No level of government may legitimately violate an unalienable right, such as the right to self defense and the means to exercise that right.
Presently, they number about 40,000 dues-paying members, so they say. Back in the '90s, they claimed 400,000 members. As for the Violence Policy Center, that's never really been anything but Josh Sugarmann in his Washington DC apartment sitting on the floor Indian-style strumming a guitar and desperately trying to impress lefty coeds with his anti-violent 'sensitive ponytail guy' demeanor.
In truth, I bet their membership a fraction of that claimed 40,000 figure. About 1/5th, I think. 8,000 members at most. Lots of these are honorary memberships they give away to celebrities in exchange for putting up their portrait on the Brady Campaign website. If you go there, you can see a buttload of washed up old has-beens, some of whom are even dead, like comedian Bernie Mac. For many celebrities, the Brady Campaign and it's partners was just a charitable tax dodge that wouldn't be scrutinized by the IRS.
The last time I infiltrated a Brady Campaign event was in San Francisco about six or seven years ago when they were laying pairs of shoes (to represent victims of gun crime) on the city hall steps when a bill to ban all firearms in San Francisco was proposed by the city council. I looked around and saw that I was just about the only white male there, and with few exceptions was one of very few white people at all. Everyone else appeared to be mothers of gunned down gang-banging teens with graduation pictures of their slain offspring, which I Googled later and found pictures of the same kids throwing up gang signs on their MySpace pages and newspaper accounts of how they got killed in gang-related circumstances. I suppose it was pretty hard to find some innocent overachiever girl caught in a crossfire coming home from the library after working her minimum wage job to support her momma and family like the Brady Campaign prefers their martyrs background to be, but I guess any old dead teenager will do regardless of the circumstances of their demise.
The rest of this very small Brady Campaign crowd was a handful of Oakland hood rats rapping out some whack anti-gun rhymes like you see on 'Def Poetry Jam', with everyone wearing the same event t-shirts. Most pathetic of all was the white liberal mommy in a straw sun hat who brought her elementary school aged white daughters to the event and left promptly once the black mothers started shouting angrily about how the evil NRA's bullets were responsible for her drug-slangin' whoo-banging son getting all jacked up in his grill on their front porch several years ago in a drive-by shooting. Black people started getting loud and boisterous, and it was then I noticed that the white mother decided that was the end of her participation in fighting the good fight and was already walking back to where her soccer mom SUV was parked.
The local Brady Campaign hosted site from the URL given out at the event had pics of the same kids and it was hard not to notice that many of them on the page showed marks of obvious gang affiliation.
In the '80s and '90s, the Brady Campaign used to be composed of wealthy middle aged upscale metro area white liberal donors from NYC and DC, but those people are pretty much all gone now, or just don't donate anymore. The Brady Campaign is all about sending their message through inner city single mothers who've had sons gunned down by enemy gang-bangers... and truth be told, who in the hell even listens to people like that? Jesse Jackson, MAYBE, and that's probably only just to get her phone number as long as she's not too old, you know, now that her son is out of the house.
Biggest problem that the Brady Campaign faces is that most of their former supporters from the '90s probably all own multiple firearms these days.
Most of the elite folks in each state, who comprise the favored constituency of politicians, do lean against the rights of the rabble. They’ve done it for environmentalism to prevent new business competition, for funds from the federal government, and generally, to prevail in competition against their neighbors. They made both political parties so socialist, that spending won’t be sufficiently cut to avoid default. They don’t need to be running the show any more than they already are.
But don’t listen to me. Suck up that government money, and cruise on toward default. We peasants will rebuild afterward.
And we don’t need any stinkin’ VAT tax, either.
Oh...and join your own local 2nd Amendment organizations against your states’ elite, liberal folks with direct and indirect incomes from government debt.
Normally, I’m very sympathetic to appeals to the 10th and distributed power in general. It support the labs of democracy concept and tyranny is far more difficult when your would-be victims can just move a hundred miles and defy it. But DC?? DC is inherently a creature of the federal/national government! If you’re going to champion the 10th, DC is a ridiculous place to do so.
Well, she does it for free anyway, so what the hey?
When the 10th DOESN’T apply ping!
Thanks for the chuckle at the expense of the bradys and for the pings to an entertaining article.
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