New President for the Brady Campaign

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Tom Servo

Staff
Since Paul Helmke stepped down last year, Dennis Henigan has been serving as active president. Today, the Brady Campaign announced that Daniel Gross would be taking the reins.

Gross was formerly the director of the Center to Prevent Youth Violence. I can't find much about their funding. They were previously known as PAX, who received a $200,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation in 2004, but the trail appears to stop there.

Given that the Brady Campaign's budget has fallen into the four-digit range, I'm curious as to whether this guy is bringing in further funding, as they can't be paying him much.

Or, it might just be a part-time gig for him to build mindshare.
 
From the USA Today article which Tom Servo linked you'll find this statement by the new Brady President, Mr. Gross:

"Policy is a big part of the solution but people have to realize that this isn't a political issue, this is an issue that's claiming the lives of 30,000 people every year and eight kids every day and we need to approach it with that kind of urgency," Gross said.

8 kids x 365 = 2,920

They must still have a skewed definition of the word "kids". I'm willing to bet that almost all of those deaths are gang, drug, and crime related deaths. Some may be suicides, but gun control will have little, if any, effect on suicides. Japan, with few guns, is one of the world leaders in death by suicide.
 
They must still have a skewed definition of the word "kids"
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If I go through the CDC National Vital Statistics, I'd have to add up all types of injury (negligent, suicide, assault), and I'd have to go all the way up through age 24. Even then, I'm not getting quite that number.

Yeah, it's skewed. They assume nobody's checking their math.

If they ever need funds they can always sell their gun collection.
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I think you've got the Brady Campaign mixed up with the Violence Policy Center there.
 
Brady has been well known in the past for pushing the definition of "kids" well into the 20s, so I have no doubt that they're doing it here, too, as well as throwing in some extras for a tip.
 
The guys number of 30,000 is approximately correct if you include every suicide, accident, police shooting, justifiable homicide, and murder for all age groups. Of that number, about 60% are suicides. As for the "8 kids a day" bit, how many of those "kids" were 19 and 20-year old gangbangers and drug dealers?
 
C0unt, that number is included in the total, but is pretty tiny, about 300, give or take--say about one percent of the total.
 
Of those '8 kids a day', the number of actual innocent children who are victims of accidental shootings is about 0.25 kids per day. The remainder are teens and young adults engaging in criminal or gang activity.
 
Yeah, it's skewed. They assume nobody's checking their math.
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In a way, they're actually right. Very few people are checking their math because very few people are paying attention to them anymore. The Brady Campaign (formerly Handgun Control Inc.) has been rapidly fading from relevancy since Al Gore lost the presidential election in 2000 due in no small part to his stance on gun control. Brady/HCI has lost every major political battle they've been involved in since 2001.

Actually, it's kind of ironic that the beginning of the end for them was also their crowning achievement: the '94 AWB. Not only did that law out them as the liars they are since crime was not demonstrably affected one way or the other by the AWB, but the political backlash of it (the Republican takeover of congress in 1994 was at least partially attributable to the AWB) ensured that many politicians cooled towards them and became less willing to stick their neck out for gun control. By pushing so hard so fast, they helped to turn gun control into a poison issue politically that no one but the most extreme anti-gun politicians from ultra-liberal districts wants to push too hard for. The phrase that comes most readily to mind is "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it."
 
Of those '8 kids a day', the number of actual innocent children who are victims of accidental shootings is about 0.25 kids per day. The remainder are teens and young adults engaging in criminal or gang activity.
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Yeah maybe but we all know they would not kill each other if they had no guns to do it with.

:rolleyes:
 
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