BRADY BUNCH IS SALIVATING

The "Brady Bunch" is my term for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and all the other gun control advocates.

In the past month, 53 people have died in seven mass shootings. Single shooters gunned down four Oakland (CA) police officers in one incident and three Pittsburgh (PA) officers in another. 13 people were shot to death by a deranged shooter in Binghamton even though New York has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. The Brady Bunch is salivating.

Here is a statement from the Brady Campaign's website: Enough is Enough! Our Leaders Must Act. Saturday's murder of three police officers by a killer wielding an assault rifle in Pittsburgh, following Friday's tragic shooting in Binghamton, New York that left 13 dead and four others injured are the latest in an epidemic of mass shootings in America. We have witnessed major shootings in senior centers, churches, high schools, colleges, and workplaces. Over and over Congress opts to do nothing while the body count continues to rise. What horrendous shooting will it take for our leaders to act or does Congress know no bounds to the bloodletting because it has been paralyzed by the gun lobby? The Congress and the White House must act to protect our families and communities from gun violence. Our weak, nearly non-existent, gun laws at the national level contribute to this loss of innocent life. Enforcing those laws alone will not solve the problem.

Other gun control advocates have chimed in with calls for restrictiions on gun ownership for private citizens. They range from banning assault rifles, limiting magazine capacity, levying extremely high taxes on gun and ammo purchases, mental health checks of all prospective gun buyers, registration of all privately owned guns, to outright bans on handgun ownership.

What kind of guns are being used in these mass shootings. Two of the Oakland police officers were killed with a hangun and the other two with an assault rifle, as were the Pittsburgh officers. Most of the other mass shootings involved handguns. One shooting was committed with an ordinary rifle. The Binghamton nut-case used two handguns for which he had been issued a permit from the state that severely limits handgun ownership.

The Brady Bunch is also using the deadly violence of the Mexican drug cartels to call for strict limits on gun sales. Gun control advocdates, along with some government officials, claim that the cartels are getting guns smuggled into Mexico by using "straw buyers" to purchase arms at gun shops and gun shows in this country, primarily in Texas. While a few guns have been purchased by straw buyers, claims that the cartels are receiving their arms throug gun shop and gun show purchases are bogus.

In my recent blog (Drug Cartels Do Not Get Military-Style Weapons from Texas Gun Dealers [3-27-09]), I included a Townhall.com column in which David Harsanyi wrote: During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week, titled "Law Enforcement Responses to Mexican Drug Cartels," one senator after another tried to induce law enforcement officials, who have every motivation to play along, to claim that military-style arms are streaming into Mexico from the United States. Not one expert agreed. The Los Angeles Times, in fact, recently reported that the "enhanced weaponry" used by drug cartels "represents a wide sampling from the international arms bazaar, with grenades and launchers produced by U.S., South Korean, Israeli, Spanish or former Soviet bloc manufacturers. Many had been sold legally to governments, including Mexico's, and then were diverted onto the black market."

As a former law enforcement officer I know that whenever any cop is killed in the line of duty it's like a death in the family. It is estimated that there are 235 million firearms (handguns, rifles, and shotguns) owned by civilians and that "assault weapons" are only about one percent of the guns used in crime. Those of us who believe the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to own guns would not turn them over to the government if the possession of handguns and certain other firearms were to be prohibited. And, of course, criminals are not going to turn their guns in either. Thus, strict gun controls, including a ban on assault weapons, would not really make police work any less dangerous.

The Brady Bunch is using scare tactics in the hope that a frightened public will pressure legislators into passing severe restrictions on gun purchases, if not outright bans. The truth is that 99 percent of American gun owners use their guns responsibly for self-defense or sporting purposes. The Brady Bunch ignores the fact that outlaws own all the guns in countries that have outlawed guns. And speaking of those horrible assault weapons, the fact that Jim Brady was shot with a .22 caliber pistol is being conveniently overlooked.