My colleague Scott Freigh recently posted an item on www.GunReports.com that was ridiculous and serious — the 2011 Brady State Gun Control Scorecard. But snarky comments about the Brady rankings from “GunReporters” made me laugh out loud.
The setup: The Brady Campaign gave its best grade on the group’s 2011 State Gun Control Scorecard to California. The Brady Campaign said California “continues to blaze legislative trails saving lives,” earning 81 points out of 100 on the Brady scorecard. That’s the state in which the total violent crime, murder, robbery, and aggravated assault rates were higher than national rates in 2010, the most recent full year reported by the FBI. In contrast, Arizona, Alaska, and Utah scored 0/100 points on the Brady scale. California’s total violent crime rate was 5% higher, murder was 16% higher, and robbery was 97% higher than the average rates for the 0-ranked states, according to an NRA-ILA summary. So a “Winner” in Brady’s universe is “Fail” in the real world. One sign that LE knows that’s true: The FBI doesn’t include gun control in its list of “factors that are known to affect the volume and type of crime occurring from place to place.”
I won’t go into all the scoring, but the Brady Campaign awards a state 21 points if the state requires a license to possess a firearm, a permit to purchase firearms and ammunition, and fingerprinting and safety training as part of obtaining such a permit. It gives another 17 points for prohibiting all private sales of firearms. The 2011 scorecard awards 2 points to any state that doesn’t have a “shall issue” carry-permit law. GunReports posted the state-by-state scorecard, which lead to reactions Brady supporters won’t understand. (I’ve included the state rankings or state names in brackets for your convenience.)
“Jeff C” rooted for his state to move down in the rankings: “Come on Kentucky! [tied for 47th] We still have two points. It’s time to pull together and get down to 0!”
“Shootist” said, “We here in Nevada [T-29] are at 5 and working on reducing that. We are issuing more and more CCWs in our state, and since we started, our violent crime rate has been dropping steadily. We will be at zero not too long from now.
“Triathloncoach” wrote, “Last year I moved from NJ [2] to Georgia [T-22]. Nice! I feel much safer now that the criminals are not the only ones carrying guns when I leave my house.”
“Cecil B” commented, “Makes me proud to live in Texas [T-39], but we gotta work on getting down to 0.”
“David B” wrote, “Crap! I live in #5 [Connecticut], sandwiched in between 2 [New Jersey], 3 [Massachusetts], and 4 [New York]. I gotta move!” – GT
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