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RIP Jim Brady
He may have been on the other side, but by all accounts was a nice guy. I met him briefly in the Supreme Court elevator, coming back from the argument in Sheriffs Pritz & Mack v. U.S., and with some effort he managed a smiling "hello."
I was in D.C. on the day when Hinkley shot him and President Reagan, and heard all the sirens going off, back 33 years ago.
UPDATE: I'm too much of a historian to relish myth, and some of the descriptions coming out are pure myth. Understand, Brady was not just confined to a wheelchair; when I saw him he was in one of those crosses between a wheelchair and a gurney, and he could manage to utter one word. A description of him at a later rally said that he managed with effort to say "fight ... fiercely." But this editorial says that he "personally called the then-state [CT] attorney general [Blumenthal] to encourage his efforts," with Blumenthal saying they "maintained a working relationship for nearly 20 years as Blumenthal became a Democratic senator from Connecticut." It adds that "Blumenthal said Brady was also active on the state level..."
One thing I find a bit irksome is that the history, dare I say revisionist history, of the Brady Campaign entirely omits the person who made it into a powerful organization: Nelson "Pete" Shields, who started in when it was a miniscule group called the National Council to Control Handguns, and turned it into a much larger group known at Handgun Control, Inc., recruited the Bradys, and ultimately turned it over to them. And within a year or two he became at most a footnote in its history. I wouldn't be surprised if the organization is smaller, and certainly it's less powerful, than when Shields finished building it up.
I doubt that Shields and Harlon Carter ever met, but they were counterparts, individuals who formed the opposing organizations, largely from the ground up (NRA had been around since 1871, but in the mid-70s was considering abandoning politics entirely). NRA has a bronze bust of Harlon in its HQ, and recognizes his leadership; Brady has made its real founder almost a non-person.
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I find it impossible to be gracious, so I'll just remain silent.
Nice guy? Yeah. But deluded.
It's really impossible to say whether or not he was deluded, since he himself was never really active or vocal. Sarah simply used him as the organ grinder's monkey to facilitate her own agenda. I don't know whether she started out that way, but I suspect that she, like Carolyn McCarthy and Cindy Sheehan, probably became mentally unhinged when faced with violent losses and found solace on the dark and crazy side.
You may be correct. But having observed McCarthy from within the District she supposedly represents since she was first elected, I am struck by how wealthy she became as a consequence of the killing of her husband and her son's permanent injuries.
Like Brady, Sheehan and (don’t forget) Diane Feinstein (and her close friend Harvey Milk), McCarthy has never cared about accomplishing anything positive; they all only care about perpetuating their “soap box”, as it is integral to their “self-promotion” and sense of self.
Some years ago, I was in a group that toured the Congress and received White House passes through the “courtesy” of McCarthy’s office. We were further “honored” to be allowed into her office. On the wall was a letter from former NY Cardinal Cooke, Archbishop of New York; he offered congratulations on her being elected to Congress, condolences on the tragedy that first brought her to office, and a prayer that that tragedy might bring some good to the country.
This to a nurse who would have been well aware of the abandonment of NY's mentally ill by Nelson Rockefeller in response to Geraldo Rivera's epic piece of ‘70s investigative reporting: Willowbrook. Tens of thousands of former NY State mentally ill and incompetent wards were released to the streets (to die of exposure and violence).
If any of the above named women or Rivera cared anything about their “causes” they would have as a core advocacy the plight of the mentally ill and incompetent.
As to James Brady, I don’t wish anyone to suffer violence. But, his injuries were a foreseeable risk and consequence of the job he sought. Even if he was a “nice guy”, seeking to deprive the law-abiding of their unalienable rights as compensation for his injuries and not advocating to help the mentally ill speaks volumes about the man he was not.
"his injuries were a foreseeable risk and consequence of the job he sought."
????
I hardly think what happened to him was a foreseeable risk -- it didn't happen to any of his predecessors.
I seem to remember that Sarah Brady was writing anti gun articles in the New Yorker magazine years before her husband was shot.
I haven't paid much attention to him (personally) for years, but back when he "became" active in the anti-gun movement it was impossible not to notice that he (trigger warning: crude simile)
had his wife's arm up his butt.
He may or may not have been a nice guy, but his wife was/is a first class scheming bitch.