Can Brady Campaign’s New President Save Them?
The Brady Campaign recently announced their new president, Daniel Gross, an advertising professional turned gun-control promoter. Gallup rates advertising professionals among the lowest for honesty and ethics, and Gross provides a corroborative case study.
In a recent USA Today interview, Gross said “he wants to start a national conversation on gun control and get people engaged in a deep way.”
But we’ve been having this “conversation” for decades. In 1993, President Clinton signed the Brady Campaign’s signature legislation — the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act — into law, mandating federal background checks on firearm sales by licensed dealers. Jim and Sarah Brady began lobbying for this law in 1986.
Brady advertises the bill as the reason why violent crime declined. However, violent crime and murder rates began declining in 1991, two years earlier.
A recent report showed how Brady’s losing traction because their claims equating gun control with safety are false: states with more gun regulations have higher violent crime and murder rates. This resulted in declining revenues that reflect Brady’s declining political influence.
But that’s only the beginning. Gross’ next advertising:
Policy is a big part of the solution but people have to realize that this isn’t a political issue, this is an issue that’s claiming the lives of 30,000 people every year and eight kids every day and we need to approach it with that kind of urgency.
But gun control is a political issue. In the current Congress, Republicans’ average NRA grade is “A” while Democrats average “D.” Of the 106 Brady endorsees in 2010, 104 were Democrats. Democrats are the party of gun control.
To advertise gun control successfully, an emotional hook is vital. The best way is to misrepresent fatality data to create the illusion that America’s awash in a violent crime wave due to firearms access. For Brady’s purposes, higher body count is vital.
The most common anti-rights advertising includes the “30,000 firearm deaths a year” and “8 kids a day” messages. These misleading fatality numbers include legal intervention (justifiable homicides due to shooting criminals committing felonies), suicides, and accidents.
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from 2009 show there were 31,347 total firearms-related fatalities, but 18,735 (59.8%) were suicides.
Including suicides in overall “gun death” numbers makes for more dramatic copy, but a recent United Nations study shows there’s no correlation between firearms ownership and suicide; though the U.S. has the highest firearms ownership in the world, its suicide rank is 41st out of 86 countries.
UNICEF cited 1994 Canadian research that “linked suicide among young people to sexual and emotional abuse, stress, unplanned pregnancy, problems concerning sexual preference, unemployment, imprisonment, and running away from home.” This report preceded major gun control efforts in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In spite of the then-greater prevalence of firearms, they’re not a suicide “link.”
The emotional “8 kids every day” message is designed to “get people engaged in a deep way” to support gun control. Sensible people advocate child safety. But to reach “8 kids a day” Gross includes young adults up to age 19.
What’s a “child,” of which “kid” is a synonym? Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word “childhood” as: “The state or stage of life as a child…the time from birth to puberty.” OED defines “puberty” as: “The period during which adolescents reach sexual maturity and become capable of reproduction, distinguished by the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics.” There seems to be general agreement that these conditions occur by the age of 15, defining children as age 0-14.
The table below shows that 12.6% of all firearms fatalities and homicides for ages 0-19 occur in Gross’ “kids” category, less than one child per day.
In 2009, “an estimated 1,770 children died due to abuse or neglect,” nearly 5 children daily. Gross’ Center to Prevent Youth Violence (CPYV), which he co-founded in 1998, offers no programs addressing this more serious cause of child homicide.
The table below shows that firearms fatalities have decreased dramatically since 1991, with child safety leading the way even though their rates were already less than one-tenth the non-child rate in 1991. But it also explains the “five kids a day” dying from abuse: Children’s firearms homicide rates declined faster than their non-firearms rate because it’s easier for an adult to kill a small child by any means.
(* All rates reported as incidents per 100,000 population.)
In all categories but one — non-child homicide — firearms fatality rates declined faster than non-firearms rates. Non-firearms suicide rates increased, corroborating UN research noted above: Intent is key, because firearms ownership increased during this time period. As one example of the disconnect between gun ownership and firearms fatality rates, the graph that follows shows that as firearms ownership increased, child firearms homicides declined.
By selecting an advertising professional to lead them, what does Brady truly represent?
Propaganda just like they always have, just better at twisting words to make the “new truth”.
Maybe they represent the knife making industry. Or possibly the ice pick lobby. The Center for Disease Control? The American Bar Association? How about the Eric Holder defense team?
I would like Gross to explain why the murder rate declined sharply in the U.S. from the 1930s through the 1950s, even though we had few gun control laws back then.
Evidently some other factors were more important.
And then the murder rate started climbing sharply in the 1960s, even though the Sullivan Act wasn’t repealed.
sinz54 – The sharp decline in homicide rates (but not so much in property crime rates) began in 1934 with the ending of prohibition. Now, maybe if we modified our mindless ‘drug’ laws we would see a further reduction in an already low homicide rate.
If someone in the Brady family were killed by a new electric car, would they spend the rest of their lives pushing for the outlawing of electric cars? If someone in your life died in a commercial airline crash, would you campaign to outlaw all commercial airline flights?
All I know is when they come for your guns it is all over! I only have a couple of rifles but at least I know how to use them. All 3 of my kids made it out alive by the way.
No, silly, planes and cars won’t be completely banned. They will be needed for Army personnel, police officers, and bureaucrats going from place to place, to enforce all their bans.
Planes and cars being used by ordinary mortals is the problem. Once these things are only reserved to our Privileged Overlords, will there be World Peace!
And the same goes for guns as well…
There is nothing left to discus on this subject.
The “BUSH LIED…PEOPLE DIED!” bumper stickers have faded. Look soon for
“8 KIDS A DAY!” stickers on the Volvo bumpers.
In keeping with my capitalistic viewpoint. I’m going to make that bumper sticker to sell to idiot liberals at the next occupy function. In all seriousness, I’m afraid we’ll see a bumper sticker just like that. After all. “Arms are for Hugging.”
You can’t hug a kid with nuclear arms – but you sure can PROTECT a lot of kids with nuclear arms. And with other kinds of arms as well.
Hey, you leave my Volvo with 200k+ miles out of this argument. It proudly has transported us many times to the shooting range…
Says Jeff Foxworthy: “You might be a redneck if…
You think a Volvo is a part of a woman’s anatomy!”
LOL…
Having been born and raised in Boston I’ve seen firsthand how the gun control agenda is driven by lies and half truths
For the left, no lie or distortion is too big to parrot, in order to implement their non freedom agenda. Business as usual for them.
I take no pride in stating that I have met Paul Helmke on several occassions and voted for this dude once and did not vote for him when he ran for senate. He is a lawyer so what are your expectations? Pretty low I bet. Bostonians or whatever city or town you live in need to get involved and quit being so naive on how the judicial works. At cocktail parties they talk about recidicizum which is a term used frequently. If they have an illegal firearm or have even used one on the commission of a crime they usually get off with a slap on the wrist as long as they didn’t maim or kill someone. While legal responsible CCW’s are persecuted at ever turn. Why? It is all about the cash. There are thousands of firearm laws on the books and we need less not more. We need CCW’s and reciprocity nationwide and we need illegal firearm possessors to be interned for years. Just the way it should be but it is not.
What is this “recidicizism” of which you speak?
Do you mean “recidivism,” which is returningt to a life of crime?
Proper spelling matters when you’re trying to communicate. Believe me, it does not look good when I see posts on here and other sites that look as if they’re from non-native English speakers.
You are absolutely correct that my Office Word corrected the word in a way I did not expect.
I have to take issue with this, for one very important reason: the Internet is rather global. Thus, I sometimes see comments from people around the world on the Internet, many of whom are not native speakers of English. They may be Spanish, or Russian, or French, or Slovakian, or Japanese, or German, or British (sorry, I can’t help myself
, or any number of other nationalities. If they have something useful to add, then by all means, they should be free to make their point, spelling and grammar mistakes and all.
That, and it’s one thing to make a spelling mistake in your doctoral dissertation or published Great American Novel (which still happens, even when you’re careful)–it’s another to make a mistake here, when you make a somewhat off-the-cuff comment, and have no “edit” button (or, at best, a five-minute window to correct things) right after you push “submit”.
So give this guy some slack!
Sure, disarm America, then sit back and observe what happens next. Obama,Schumer, the rest of the pack will find new ways of naked control and force. What the hell, they already are, can you imagine what would come next?
The power freaks are far to enamoured of gun control, power lust and political control are not a good combination, unless you’re a frustrated stalinist.
Gun control advocates in general, and the Brady Campaign in particular rarely concern themselves with facts.
I hit mute during the ads. Any reader of PJM who is not an NRA member and believes in the Bill of Rights is laughable. Also, any gun owner should also be a member of GOA. If this guy was making any real money he would be selling beer or boner pills. No worries.
Helmke, last Brady president, made a cool quarter million annually, salary and benefits.
Its not gun control, its people control…
Some people want to be free.
Others want to be “connected”, the favored players of a regime that more or less controls everything.
Liberals see themselves as connected.
They drank the kool-aid, so they think they’re “in”
And they dont need guns…
They’ll happily send an armed swat team, that represnts and enforces THEIR political views, to do the heavy lifting.
Gated communities, armed guards, politico’s vying for donations from/dispensing O.P.M. to, the connected elite.
Free people really mess up that utopia, dont we?
I believe firearm purchases have increased substantially under the current President. I’ll bet the leftys are more than a bit upset by that development.
I hope the left keeps pushing the anti firearms agenda, it is a sure fire killer at election time. I would love it if it became a major issue this fall.
Please put me on your list. Ron
Let’s not forget that if Obama is reelected, he will be able to appoint more subversives at the Supreme Court, and our Second Amendment rights will be lost.
Think about that on election day.
Yes, that’s the bad news.
The really bad news is that Romney will do the same.
Howard Nemerov – Do the Brady people believe for a moment that banning guns is going to reduce crime? The only people who will be affected by such a ban would be law-abiding individuals. The bad-guys will get guns anyway because they are not law-abiding. Case in point: When the UK essentially banned guns in 1996 it experienced an explosion of violent crime (which when I last looked has continued its retlentless increase). To ban guys would make us law-abiding citizens fish in a barrel for the non-law-abiding. Remember, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away (and as most who read the postings here know, or should know) the police are under no obligation to protect an individual citizen.
(HN Grammar alert – You wrote: “The FBI says MS-13 is comprised of…” It should be: “The FBI say MS-13 comprises … ” Apparently ‘comprised of’ is not proper English, at least not yet.)
Interesting. I sent your comment along to my editor. Thanks for reading so closely.
You’re welcome!!
Not buying that grammer alert…;-) ms13 does not comprise (or compose)the other groups, it is comprised or composed (or made up)of the other groups…..and technically you can fight as long as you want about ‘pose’ or ‘pris’….that’s a net zero..imho….
Negatory, good buddy.
“Comprised” is not a synonym for “composed”.
It’s a different beast entirely.
sogmeister – I didn’t pull this out of thin air. Please refer to p.113 of Theodore M. Bernstein’s, The Careful Writer, New York: Atheneum (1978).
Grammar note, per English class; perhaps even Journalism (!) class: “composed of,” but not “comprised of.” And, heaven help us, “impact” should not be used as a verb. Also, alternatives refers to no more than two possibilities or choices.
Good luck to us all.
Yeah, sure, already answered above. Now to ‘impact’. Oxford English Dictionary lists ‘impact’ as a verb.
From OED regarding ‘alternatives’: “Each of the components of an alternative proposition; each of two or more possibilities…”
Take your concerns up with them.
For reading comprehension and grammar, you didn’t do so well yourself.
Yes, alas, the OED has been taken over by the Deconstructionists.
You should probably research that term, and learn whose useful idiot you are.
Why should I when we have you to lord it over us?
The events in Chardon, OH though tragic are going to give these people “fodder” for their cause. They still won’t give up the fact that you CANNOT legislate away sick, demented people. Maybe if someone in the school had been concealed carrying, the toll would have been less, and the shooter would be the statistic instead of the kids.
The socialist progressives that have taken over the democratic party have long known that to obscure and conceal their true intentions, effective marketing is the road to power in America and around the world. Create the desired impressions with clever rhetoric immersed in appropriately inflammatory images, most especially directed at youth with impressionable minds and you can create in America exactly what they have now successfully created; a dumbed down, indoctrinated population inculcated with a hatred and disgust for all things conservative and a blind, unquestioning loyalty to the twisted, socialist, progressive message. Ask not what you can do for your country but demand what your country must do for you. Listening to Obama skillfully portray himself as the perpetual victim of a “do nothing Congress” and deflect all criticism of him and his administration for his and their abject failures is akin to watching your beloved family home and all its belongings go up in smoke while a helpless, ineffectual republican bucket brigade tries in vain to put out the fire. Obama and his machine are the biggest threat America is confronted with and far more dangerous wearing their supercilious cloak of victimhood.
The murder by gun figures have decreased so much because the media is not allowed to count or talk about those shooting murders committed by tinkerbells, trannies, Muslims or illegal aliens. If we were allowed to consider all of them, the death count would be much, much higher.
Strangely, the Chicago Tribune runs a weekly column tabulating the weekend shootings. You can, in general, determine by the location if blacks were involved. We don’t know if the Trib subscribes to the above noted media convention.
I do not expect this to get very far with more and more states going the other route and allowing “shall issue carry permits” and many more handguns as well as any type firearms have been in huge demand and sales. The entire population, and especially the “silent majority” will not allow any more restrictions only less of them on the ownership of firearms.
Mr. Gross makes the second president of this organization who got involved in gun control because a family member was shot by a radical Muslim. These people cannot bring themselves to blame the people who shot their relatives, instead they insist on blaming the gun and the American citizens for owning them.
It should be noted Romney supports gun control.
It should also be noted that Gingrich isn’t too thrilled about the Second Amendment himself.