Brady Campaign hypocrisy

    Dennis Henigan edits the 2nd Amendment (video disabled)

The Brady Campaign's Dennis Henigan accuses the "gun lobby" (that's the gun haters' term for you, me, and every other American who has the temerity to refuse to surrender our Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms) of trying to hide the facts, in order to secure a tactical advantage in the gun rights vs. forcible citizen disarmament debate.

Yes, it's "déjà vu all over again," the repetition of a longtime gun lobby theme. I call it the "fear of facts." Or, "the less we know about gun violence, the better off we are." This principle dictates a recurring gun lobby tactic: when new information starts to look threatening to the pro-gun agenda, make sure it never sees the light of day.

Henigan refers to various National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants designed to determine whether or not the combination of armed teenagers and alcohol carries the risk of shootings.  From the Washington Times:

More than a decade after Congress cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), another federal health agency has been spending millions of dollars to study such topics as whether teenagers who carry firearms run a different risk of getting shot compared with suffering other sorts of injuries.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) also has been financing research to investigate whether having many liquor stores in a neighborhood puts people at greater risk of getting shot.

With a wobbly economy, a record federal deficit, and a vast, crippling national debt, does it make a great deal of sense to spend money this way?  The NRA quoted a letter from several members of Congress to the NIH's Dr. Francis Collins, expressing concerns about this "study":

"Dr. Collins, the gathering of abstract knowledge by qualified researchers who study criminal behavior is a laudable endeavor which consistently benefits the American people, often in ways that the public does not see," the lawmakers wrote. "And yet we have trouble understanding the administration's desire to spend, for example, $642,561.00 in taxpayer funds to learn how inner city teenagers whose friends, acquaintances and peers carry firearms and drink alcohol on street corners could show up in emergency rooms with gunshot wounds. 

"The day-follows-night quality of this question and its potential answer simply do not seem to justify the expense that would be borne by people who work and pay their taxes. We also wonder why NIH would be conducting work like this rather than leaving criminal behavior to the Justice Department."

Quite aside from the very legitimate concern of tax payer's hard-earned money being spent on projects of questionable (to put it kindly) value, there's also the concern that rather than a study, this will be more akin to a witch-hunt, toward a predetermined and desired (by those behind this project) end of advancing an agenda of restrictive gun laws.  Gun laws are already so restrictive that it is already illegal for teenagers carrying handguns in public, meaning that those who do so are criminals, and quite likely to be involved with criminal gang activity.  That alone would tend to tilt the results toward a determination that "guns are bad."

What amuses me most about Henigan's accusation of a "gun lobby" attempt to suppress the truth is Henigan's own record (and that of the Brady Campaign in general) of trying to sweep "inconvenient truths" under the rug.  Back in February, I posted a video clip of Henigan, filmed before Heller had gone to the Supreme Court, and the case was called the Parker case (after Shelly Parker, who was eventually dropped from the case for lack of standing, and Dick Heller became the sole plaintiff).  At that time, the Brady Campaign was still claiming that the Second Amendment protected only a "collective right" to firearms--meaning, basically, that it could simply be ignored.

In the clip, as Henigan explained the Brady Campaign position, he recited the Second Amendment--but omitted a very key part of it--the "of the people" part.  That's one way to defend a position whereby the people have no right to own guns--just leave "the people" out of the discussion.

That article is here, but if you're hoping to see the video clip there, you'll be disappointed.  As more and more people became aware of this blatant distortion of the Constitution, the Brady Campaign realized how foolish (not to mention dishonest) they looked, and took the video clip off YouTube, and everywhere else they could find it.  They thus once again tried to hide the truth--just what Henigan is now accusing the "gun lobby" of doing.

I won't  try to post the video here (I still have it, though), because I don't want to get Examiner embroiled in a court fight over what the Brady Campaign would try to frame as a copyright issue.  I think a "Fair Use" defense would have a pretty good chance--it is, after all, only 15 second excerpt from a video over 3 1/2 minutes long, but I can't drag Examiner into that.

I can, though, at least offer the audio [Update 11-11-2009: the Brady Campaign apparently has decided that even the audio clip violates their copyright--stay tuned].  Who is promoting the "bliss" of ignorance now, Dennis?

Update 11-12-2009: read more about the Brady Campaign's efforts to stifle their own words here.

Update 11-16-2009: Someone who doesn't fear Brady Campaign bullying, and who has his own copy of the video, has given me permission to post the link.