NRA on Brady Campaign's "Tasteless, Despicable" Anti-Gun Ad
We have reported many times on the Brady Campaign’s rush to exploit tragedy for political gain. Since its inception as the National Council to Control Handguns over 30 years ago, the group has premised its entire agenda on this kind of exploitation for political gain, and on the notion that having more gun control laws and, therefore, fewer guns, means that crime must necessarily decrease.
Since the senseless January 8 attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her innocent staff and constituents, anti-Second Amendment groups have been working overtime to exploit the tragedy to resurrect their political agendas. The Brady Campaign’s most recent, tasteless ploy may represent a new low.
The group has coined the term “assault clip” to describe magazines that are capable of holding more than 10 rounds. They are claiming that these “assault clips” lead to more crime and should therefore be banned. This is nothing more than a rehash of the magazine bans they’ve been supporting for nearly two decades, but they promote it with a despicable twist.
The group’s new ad shows a young male shooter on a range, shooting a pistol at silhouette targets first depicting a young girl, then a series of other innocent citizens.
The imagery is meant to support the Brady assertion that, “large capacity ammunition magazines are designed to enable shooting mass numbers of people quickly and efficiently without reloading.” But in truth, the ad insults not just the intelligence of viewers, but also the good name of the millions of honest Americans who own such firearms and magazines.
Today, Americans own more semi-automatic rifles than ever before, and more self-defense handguns with standard magazines that hold more than 10 rounds than ever before. Yet despite gun ban groups' predictions, the nation's violent crime rate is at a 35-year low.
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We have the misuse of data on both sides of this debate.
Liberalization of the gun laws has not created a surge in crime , but it is not related to a decrease in crime. The simple fact is that gun ownership doesn't seem to affect the crime rate in our current set of social and financial circumstances. The NRA has used a false correlation of gun ownership and decline in crime, and the gun control proponents have not been able to show that liberalization of gun laws has resulted in a surge in violent crime. Both groups are wrong in their assertions.
There have been several studies on the big drop in crime in the 1990s that carried through this decade. The biggest contributing factor seems to be shift in age of the population. Other factors, include a reduction of the crack epidemic, more aggressive policing for small offenses, tougher sentencing laws, the huge economic boom in the 1990s, etc. There are many factors, and increased gun ownership is not a contributor. Sample articles:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/crime_in_decline
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/uoc--nrr021207.php
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf
Legal ownership of guns seems to be neutral in its impact on crime.
The AZ incident was a lack of enforcement of current laws. The "right" thing to do is to keep guns out of the hands of crazies and let everyone else make their own decisions.
The "true" evidence of gun ownership is neutrality. It doesn't seem to deter or to increase crime. What we do have in the US, which drives the gun control advocates is one of the highest homicide rates by guns of any developed nation. *HOWEVER*, the overall decrease in homicide for all methods has deflated this argument substantially.
In the end, nothing is likely to change with respect to gun rights and ownership after the recent round of supreme court cases establishing gun ownership as an individual right that government cannot reasonably impair. At this point, it would take a constitutional amendment to substantially alter gun rights.
All the people around Gifford except the Criminal were unarmed so many died because they couldn't defend themselves.
The actor who was shooting all the silhouette targets of the innocents was only successful for the same reason. The Targets simply can't shoot back! Seems to prove that to go unarmed makes you as dumb as a cardboard target.
An effective commercial to negate the Brady one would depict the silhouette targets shooting back as soon as the Criminal started shooting thereby saving themselves.
Actually in Tuscon the two who wrestled him to the ground were CCW holders and I believe were carrying. I wasn't there but they said it was faster to do what they did, in that one individual case. You are right, armed bystanders can stop violence. I wish someone had showed a weapon to stop the 5 thugs in NC who beat that boy at a convenience store. Police did praise people for coming forward as witnesses after the fact however...
JinetLargo has a fabulous idea. Use the Brady target setup and when the shooter starts to shoot, the targets present firearms and shoot back. Beautiful idea, I wonder why someone didn't think of this before???
Do not forget, ever, that Sarah Brady's, and her organization has one goal: ban ownership of all firearms. And the gun owners arch enemy in the Senate, Charles Schumer agrees ( yet he has as concealed carry permit from NYC --- hypocrite!).