Brady used to be the big gun (pun fully intended) of the gun control world. They've been supplanted by groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, and part of that is that the leadership is full of absolute morons. Brady president Kris Brown has repeatedly said some idiotic things and rarely given anything approaching an interesting argument.
And in the midterm results, it's tripping over themselves to declare it an anti-gun victory.
The Brady Campaign, the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention organization, and Brady PAC, the political arm of the Brady Campaign, celebrate the sweeping victories of Brady-endorsed candidates who helped secure a gun violence prevention majority in Congress. This wave of progress flipped control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, a rare shift seen only twice before in the last 70 years. We witnessed red, blue, and purple states and districts across the country reject the Trump administration’s assault on public safety and the lawmakers who push deadly policies that prioritize gun industry profits over people’s lives.
This marks the first gun violence prevention majority in both chambers since the 117th Congress (2021-2023), which passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the first major federal gun safety legislation to become law in decades and an instrumental part of the historic decline in firearm homicide over the last four years. Now, Congress once again has an opportunity to take up life-saving gun violence prevention legislation backed by Brady-endorsed candidates at the helm.
Except that the guy who is responsible for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) is out following his own primary loss, one motivated in part by his role in getting that passed. There's not a single Republican I can think of who will risk his political career to help shepherd anti-gun legislation again.
Plus, this time around, we don't have an anti-gun president.
President Donald Trump wasn't particularly great on guns in his first term. He was still the better option in the 2016 race, but he was open to a lot more gun control than anyone should have been comfortable with.
This term, though, he's done playing nice because it got him nothing except two impeachments. He's not being "reasonable" on things like guns. He'll veto literally anything that comes across his desk, anyway.
In other words, Brady is trying to frame this as a brave new era, when it's not.
However, let's also be real here. Brady isn't completely off-base, either.
We already know that while Democrats ran on things like affordability, they're going to take a page out of the Virginia playbook and immediately focus on things like gun control. They might do something about affordability along the way, or try to, but the truth is that they don't see any reason to actually keep their campaign promises.
They will push gun control.
I'm not trying to imply that it won't happen. I'm saying that they're not going to be successful, and it's because they don't have veto-proof majorities in either chamber, and they lack a supermajority in the Senate where they can shut down the filibuster.
They're overstating things, but they're also saying the quiet part out loud — that this is most definitely going to involve gun control, even if that's not what the American people wanted.
To any of you who might have crossed the aisle because you just want cheaper gas, keep in mind that it's never about the issue they're running on. It's always going to be, in part, about gun control. That's something they're never letting go of.
Remember Obama saying there was no chance of gun control passing because of the "bitter clingers" and such? It didn't stop him from pushing it.
Nothing will stop this crowd from pushing it, too.
Buckle up. We're going to need those Supreme Court decisions, and we're going to need them to be as broad as humanly possible, just to keep Congress from trying to feel froggy.
