BRADY CAMPAIGN TO PREVENT GUN VIOLENCE
For Immediate Release
December 21, 2010
Contact: Caroline Brewer, 202-289-5769 or cbrew@bradymail.org
BRADY CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCES ‘GODDARDS ON GUNS’ BLOG
“Father and Son take on gun lobby after VA Tech Tragedy”
Washington, D.C. – A father who nearly lost his only son to gun violence, and that son, who survived being shot four times in the worst school shooting in U.S. history, are adding their voices to the blogosphere, the Brady Campaign today announced.
Virginia Tech survivor Colin Goddard and his father, Andrew, who are both active in the gun violence prevention movement, are teaming up to write a blog about gun issues.
“Since being shot at Virginia Tech, a number of people have told me that crazy people are going to do crazy things and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Colin Goddard, 25. “I reject that premise. There are things we can and must do. One of them is to speak out against America’s epidemic of gun violence and talk about the solutions. My voice is my greatest weapon, and blogging with my father is one of the ways I intend to use it.”
The Goddards didn’t know it then, but the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre, in which 32 students and teachers were killed, would be the event that would help them find their voices on gun violence and spur them to pursue meaningful social and public policy changes to prevent similar tragedies.
The Virginia Tech killer, who carried out the massacre with two semi-automatic assault pistols, should not have been legally allowed to purchase those guns because of his history of mental illness. When the Goddards discovered how easy it is for dangerous people to get guns in America, they vowed to fight for change.
Colin Goddard, who now works at the Brady Campaign as Assistant Director for Federal Legislation, went to gun shows with a hidden camera in 2009 as an intern for Brady to expose the loophole that allows private sellers to sell guns without criminal background checks.
That experience, and Colin’s work at Brady, inspired filmmakers to make the young man’s story the subject of a new documentary, Living for 32, which has been accepted for competition in the Short Films category at the Sundance Film Festival (see http.www.livingfor32.com) and is being screened at select venues around the country. The producer is Maria Cuomo Cole, who blogged about Colin and guns on campus on the Huffington Post recently. The post is available here.
Andrew Goddard, a retired engineer who resides in Richmond, Va., became president of the Richmond Chapter of the Million Mom March shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings.Any bets on whether or not these professional victims will allow "reasoned discourse"?
As Andrew sat near his recuperating son’s bedside that snowy April day and noticed that “sandbags are piled against the wounds to stem the bleeding, but the sheets and pillow slowly turn from starched white to dull red,” questions nagged and tugged at him. “What circumstances caused this terrible event? Where did (the shooter) get his guns and what made him want to shoot all those people? What could have been done to prevent this?” Andrew recalled with Colin in their introductory blog posted at bradycampaign.org and www.hufffingpost.com
The Goddards will blog about “the flow of guns between the legal and illegal markets, state and federal gun legislation and policies, mental health, school and university policies, and America’s culture of gun violence in general.”
Colin Goddard can also be followed on Twitter and Facebook.
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As the nation's largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence, the Brady Campaign, with its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, works to enact and enforce sensible gun laws, regulations and public policies. The Brady Campaign is devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.
I don't see a url and haven't been able to locate the actual blog site--yet.
I just don't think "Goddards on Guns" is as catchy as "The Human Target"...
UPDATE: Here it is. Nope--no comments allowed. This is my shocked face. [Thanks, Sean D Sorrentino]
11 comments:
do you think that they will allow comments? For more than 15 minutes, I mean
As I wrote, I'm taking bets on "reasoned discourse."
oh, found it. To put it in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy terms, it was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'
It's behind the same stupid wall as Paul Helmke's utterly ignorable garbage.
http://blog.bradycampaign.org/?author=208
"In future blogs we will talk about all aspects of the gun debate starting with the flow of guns between the legal and illegal markets and suggest ways that this flow could be diminished."
So just like Joan Peterson, this tool doesn't know the difference between a blog, and a post on a blog. Besides, any "blog" that doesn't allow comments is just a press release.
If they think 36,000 gun deaths a year (many in self-defense) in a population of 300 million is an "epidemic," wait until they try in earnest to really take them.
One "gun death" per every 8,333 people, usually involving someone with a long and violent record. The alternative is unfreedom and death by government, only everywhere "being safe from gun violence" has ever been tried.
The Goddards don't pass the Brandeis test: "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." They know exactly what they're proposing.
You know, well meaning conservatives miss a real opportunity when arguing with the "gun control" lobby. Many times, the pro victim disarmament crowd is anti-war. As an educated libertarian, I think the U.S. government's wars in the middle east are examples of mass murder, on par with Hitler and Nazi Germany's acts of aggression. Even if you buy the official 9/11 fairy tale, collective punishment for the brown people in sand land is unspeakably evil and stupid. The anti-gunners think only the military and police should have weapons. We rightly point out Hiter, Mao, and Stalin. The present, however, is more real. I've given liberals pause when I mention the on-going war crimes of the u.s. government overseas. The cognitive dissonance is fun to watch: "Gee, I only want the government armed, the same government that has murdered 1 million innocent brown people." They really have no response to it.
Hey, the Brady bunch learned early on to not allow comments. Remember when they did allow comments on Helmke's blog? They were looking for people to robotically support their arguments, but gun owners by the hundreds took those arguments apart. Can't have the truth get in the way of the agenda, you know.
When a drunk like Sarah Brady can threaten her semi-invalid husband with mistreatment and starvation to get him to comply with her wishes to establish a business based on gun confiscation, there's no measure of the depth to which the gun confiscation lobby will go to assist the progressive/fascist in establishing control over real Americans.
My question to them, when I have their attention, is, "Just what is it you want to do to us that requires our disarmament." Now, I know the answer, but I still like the sputtering and dissembling that they get into over their inability to answer truthfully.
Colin Goddard's "Greatest weapon is [his] voice?
Maybe that's why he was shot four times.
They don't like it when people bring THIS up:
http://www2.wsls.com/news/2009/jan/22/virginia_tech_murder_graduate_student_decapitated-ar-386838/
Hmm. Some of the seven students present called police to report that a student was being assaulted. Uh-huh.
When police arrived -- in one minute -- they found a horrific scene. Yep. The victim had been decapitated, with a large kitchen knife stolen from a campus cafe.
A finger on the trigger is worth ten on the phone.
In a night class I'm taking, students were talking about those funny Geico commercials. The one of the bird in the hand figurine at the antique appraiser came up.
These are people who hope to, and some who have, worked in hospitals and other medical venues. Handled powerful medicines. Been in charge of people's wellbeing.
They concluded that the old saying "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" means...
... if you have a bird in your hand, and there are two in a bush, the one in your hand is worth more.
And these are the high school graduates. The brainiacs.
Answer any questions?
You know, well meaning educated libertarians really miss a point when they keep troweling out, "brown people", "mass-murder of millions","on par with Hitler and Nazi Germany" and other socialist talking points. Why you're not working for the NY Times,Zach, is beyond me. If you want to compare US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to the SS and Wermacht, and the deliberate murder of "undesirables" , you go right ahead. Herr Goebbels would be proud of YOU.
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