How the mighty have fallen

Today is the 17th anniversary of the Brady Law and the Brady Bunch are celebrating.  They are clearly hoping to relive their glory days.

Back then gun control was in vogue and the Brady’s (under the Handgun Control banner) were riding high.  They just passed their signature legislation and would follow it up a year later with the ugly gun and magazine ban.  Jim & Sarah were welcomed to the White House for signing ceremonies.  They were clearly on a roll … right up until the ’94 elections …

So, where is the gun control movement today?

  • The Supreme Court affirmed that the 2nd Amendment is a fundamental individual right, ending the antis ultimate dream of total firearms prohibition.
  • No new federal gun control laws have passed in years despite there being a Democrat in the White House and Democrat supermajorities in both the House and Senate for the past two years.
  • No new state gun control laws have passed in New York over the last decade.
  • Antigun members of Congress like Carolyn McCarthy won’t reintroduce proposals to reinstate the expired Clinton gun ban even as a symbolic gesture.
  • Antigun members of the state legislature stopped trying to advance all but one gun control bill this year for the first time in I don’t know how many years.
  • The national agenda has shifted from passing legislation to boycotting Starbucks and that’s not working either.
  • Money is drying up.
  • Their loudest supporter Mayor Bloomberg senses trouble on the horizon for his fiefdom, while another, Governor Ed Rendell, has surrendered.
  • The Assembly Republicans are inviting gun owners to come to Albany to lobby in January and actually putting some effort into getting people to show up.

How the mighty have fallen.

8 thoughts on “How the mighty have fallen

  1. Joseph hit the nail on the head. Out here in Arizona, we passed constitutional carry, and reduced the required training class time for an actual permit from the original 16 hours to four. (That’s really all you need just for the safety and legal stuff and an exam anyway — you don’t go to a license course to learn how to shoot a gun.) We also eliminated the prohibition on carry in restaurants that serve alcohol, and now we’re working on eliminating the prohibition on campus carry. We have a strong citizen’s lobby group in Arizona, dedicated entirely to possession and carry issues, and quite separate from the NRA affiliate, which isn’t focused on self-defense concerns. Other state may do well to copy this organization.

  2. We don’t have mandatory training and there is no prohibition on restaurant carry in New York.

  3. Henry,

    Jacob is correct about training and restaurants.

    However NY laws are a voluminous, complicated, difficult to decipher quagmire of both vagueries and specifics with horrific penalties attached to them. Believe me you wouldn’t like it if you lived here.

    And we could easily afford to do without some federal statutes as well.

    If things are really that good for us now it’s time to try to get some of this stuff repealed.

  4. Hoping for a few more improvements. College campus and restaurant carry is a big one. And while we’ll never get to carry into a courthouse or schoolroom, I think we need rules allowing people to pick their kids up at school, get their mail at the post office, attend sporting events, and visit their relatives in the hospital without disarming.

    A Federal framework for reciprocity would be good too, along the lines of the multi-state compacts that link motor vehicle departments and the like.

    Finally, we need to repeal the pointless 1986 machine gun ban.

    With a big Republican win in 2012, none of these are out of the question at the Federal level.

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