When there’s any kind of a mass shooting, you sort of expect anti-gun groups to make a thing of it. We brace for it, knowing good and well that we’re going to see it coming.
Groups like Brady make their money during such times–yes, I mean that literally.
While I disagree with them, I can at least accept that this is part of how the battle is fought.
What I can’t accept is dishonesty.
Recently, Ranjit wrote about how anti-gunners were dishonestly presenting a gun store closure as being the result of a lawsuit. That was pretty bad.
This ain’t any better.
You see, Brady’s president, posted this earlier this week:
When even our members of Congress experience active shooter lockdowns, we know something is deeply broken. And let's be clear: It's about the guns. #GunReformNow #EnoughIsEnough pic.twitter.com/dvgZKb70LY
— Kris Brown | President, bradyunited.org (@KrisB_Brown) August 2, 2023
Oh, yes, that’s absolutely awful. Congress facing an active shooter incident? Clearly, something needs to be done.
The Washington, DC, police chief described Wednesday’s active shooter call as “bogus,” but the Brady Campaign–and campaign president Kris Brown–are using it to push gun control anyway.
The call police received was of an active shooter near Senate office buildings.
NBC News quoted DC police chief Thomas Manger reacting to the reports of a shooter, saying, “We found no confirmation that there was an active shooter, and that this may have been a bogus call.”
In other words, Kris Brown’s tweet was pushing a hoax as if it were the real thing, all in an effort to undermine our right to keep and bear arms.
See, facts don’t actually matter to people like those folks at Brady.
What matters is emotion. People who are scared or angry are easier to manipulate. When people are afraid, they’re willing to grant the government all kinds of authority they wouldn’t otherwise tolerate. That includes the ability to restrict our right to keep and bear arms.
The thing is that when emotion is what matters, you start looking for anything to get a rise out of people.
In this case, it’s an active shooter that didn’t even exist. Brown likely doesn’t feel the least bit of remorse and would justify it as, “Well, this one wasn’t real, but unless we do something, the next one might be!”
The problem is that guns are so prevalent at this point and so easily acquired via things like 3D printers that you’re never going to regulate them away. It’s simply not going to happen.
Moreover, this is the United States Congress.
Congress is a target for any manner of crazy, evil, or any other form of maliciousness you care to name…and that’s not even getting into some of the people who want to be members of it.
Even if we could ban guns semi-successfully, the members there would still face the exact same risk.
Meanwhile, regular folks all over the nation would be at risk as well because they wouldn’t have any way to defend themselves.
But again, I expect this from Brady. I expect them to take the anti-gun position. I can even accept that they’ll do it.
It’s dishonestly using a hoax to try and advance their agenda, knowing full well a lot of people don’t even click the links on sites like X, all to try and create a visceral reaction. She wanted to get an emotional response and damn the facts.
“Maybe she didn’t know it wasn’t a real attack,” someone might try to argue, but that’s also irrelevant. We all know that initial reports are sketchy and we should exercise some degree of caution. Brown has been doing this long enough as part of Brady to know good and well to do just that.
The fact that she didn’t means that facts were irrelevant to her agenda, and that’s disgusting.
