Why Nobody on the Pro-Gun Side Will Ever Seriously Talk to the Brady Folks

(Part 1 of a 3-part series. Later posts will deal with legal and technical issues.)

First, the history that I can recall:

The Brady Campaign started out as "Handgun Control, Inc." sometime in the 1970s Their position on handguns was pretty clear: No civilians should own them. As a point of fact, it was pretty clear that they held that civilians should not be allowed to own firearms, period.

After the first few mass shootings (one of them was in the UK, remember), HCI, which then had renamed itself into "The Brady Campaign", jumped on the bandwagon to try to ban those evil black rifles. TBC made it clear, at the time, that their idea of a "first step" was to ban the possession of EBRs and, for that matter, the possession of ammunition magazines that held more than six shots. They were against the sale of fully-jacketed ammunition, as those were "for military use". They were against the sale of hollowpoint ammunition because "they were designed to kill people". Rifles with scope sights were "sniper rifles" And, of course, they maintained their campaign to outlaw handguns. By that time (the 1990s), TBC denied that they opposed the private ownership of all firearms, but when pressed on what they thought were acceptable weapons for civilians to own, it was pretty much open-sighted .22 rifles.

As time wore on, it became clear to almost all concerned that HCI/TBC's strategy was to keep pushing and pushing for a complete ban. Incremental victories, such as the ban on production of further manufacture of fully-automatic firearms (1986) or the assault weapons ban (1994), were viewed as just that by HCI/TBC. In reaction, the grass roots of the firearms groups probably pushed the leadership on this point: There was nothing to be gained from talking to HCI/TBC any more.

Politicians began to take note. One of the first GOP politicians to babble on about "taking on the NRA" and instituting more gun control was a Republican Congressman named Peter Smith in Vermont. Around 1989, he came out firm for gun control and proclaimed that he wasn't "afraid of the NRA" and that the true Vermonters would support him. The state GOP stood behind him, the voters didn't, and he was kicked out of office in 1990.

Some lessons are slow for elected officials to learn, but this fact was not lost on the pro-gun side: Those who support ownership of firearms would turn out at the polls. Barney Frank knew that, for in the late 1980s, he advised his party that if they kept on following the gun-control crowd, they would lose.

They didn't listen to him. In 1993, the Democrats rammed through the Brady Bill. In 1994, they lost control of the Congress. The then Speaker of the House lost his election back home. Early in 1995, in a discussion that the gun-control crowd has tried to forget, Bill Clinton spoke to the editors of a Cleveland newspaper and lamented that it was the Brady Bill that cost the Democrats control of Congress.

(I should note that not all of the nuttery on this comes from TBC. The pro-gun groups can give rise to some conspiracy theories that can make you wonder if their leadership needs to have their meds readjusted.)

Where we are today is that other than a few areas in the country, the politicians know that a pro-gun control stance is tantamount to political seppuku. Even Hillary Clinton tried to play the pro-gun card four years ago.

For the pro-gun control side, all they have to seize on is events such as the Murderings of the Aurora Asswipe. Consider this:

Other than a few enlightened states, such as Connecticut and Vermont, concealed carry of handguns was largely illegal across much of the nation 25 years ago. Then states began permitting concealed carry by citizens. The gun control activists and their allies, at virtually every state where this was done, predicted that the streets would run with blood and that armed civilians would be shooting it out over parking spaces and traffic accidents.

The problem with that, of course, is that it didn't happen. The rate of violent crime has dropped in the last twenty years. For those who thought that the criminals would shift over to property crimes, those rates went down. The number of people with concealed carry permits went up. Firearms ownership went up. But crime rates went down.

That doesn't stop HCI/TBC from pounding their drums. They are ideologues. Other than clowns like the Mayors Against All Guns, most people who said they support gun control did so because of the purported linkage between crime and guns. Since crime rates have dropped, the argument that "gun control is the way to fight crime" failed for those in the reality-based community.

HCI/TBC has no serious constituency. Politicians do pay attention to membership amounts; TBC has less than 30,000 members, the NRA has over four million (the Second Amendment Foundation has over 650,000 members, though some folks may also be NRA members). Gun ownership rates in the country are such that in many states, a majority of the voting public own firearms.

HCI/TBC can send their drones out to talk. The New York Times and the Washington Post can publish their whinging editorials. But they have lost the argument and they know it.

That's why nobody will talk to the Brady folks.

(Co-bloggers take on things.)