Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss? "Brady gun-control organization gets new president."

[beevul]

Brady gun-control organization gets new president

By Michael Taft, courtesy of the Brady Center

Youth anti-violence advocate Daniel Gross has been elected to head the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center, the Washington-based organization promoting gun control plans to announce Monday.

Gross is cofounder and executive director of the Center to Prevent Youth Violence and was elected to the Brady post by the organization's board of trustees. He replaces former Brady president Paul Helmke, former mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., who announced in June he would step down on July 10. Helmke's resignation followed a five-year commitment he'd made to serve the organization starting in 2006.

Gross spoke with USA TODAY over the weekend and said he wants to start a national conversation on gun control and get people engaged in a deep way.

"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.


http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/02/brady-gun-control-organization-gets-new-president/1


While I do note that it appears hes comfortable with using the same misleading terminology and talking points we have been acustomed to, "Eight kids a day" and "an issue that's claiming the lives of 30,000 people every year", for example, I can't say I know much about the guy.

There are quite the number of rumors floating around the net about this fella. The main speculation seems to be that the brady campaign hired him, as someone with the means and connections to fill their empty warchest.

After this piece by him on huffpo, I do wonder what, if any, change in direction there will be for the org. In a comment to his piece he says in part:

I'm sorry if my commentary comes off against gun owners, or guns. That's not my intent. I'm simply pointing to parents undeniable risks associated with youth access to firearms, because they can actually do something about it. Why does this make people so defensive? Why would anyone not want parents to know something that could save their child's life? To argue whether statistics should include 18 and 19 year olds, or to point out that there are a lot of other ways in which kids die too, or to debate whether suicides should be labeled violent deaths, are just distractio­ns from facts and knowledge that could prevent hundreds of deaths every year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-gross/another-tragic-gun-death-_b_846558.html

I think what he is missing, is that his org has a history of dishonesty, and that in including 18 and 19 year olds as kids, hes simply continuing that dishonesty, or at the very least, giving that perception added life. And, including suicides as "gun violence", has been nearly universally condemned, yet it appears he chooses to continue with the practice.


Will they change their direction, or will they continue to be the would be wolf in sheeps clothing with questionable motives that they have been up to this point?

Discuss.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

1. In many cases...

...the language and rhetoric of a speaker is artfully assembled ahead of time. It is a strategy of progression toward one or more goals. I fail to see how a new head will make a difference in an organization that has yet to change a goal.

[aikoaiko]

2. Gross-The bottom line is making people care about this issue and care about it personally and deeply

Oh, Daniel Gross, you're way behind the curve on this one.

[SteveW]

3. Is he yet another Republican? nt

[Lefty48197]

4. Can you imagine if we had 8 American children dying each day because of the Flu? Or salmonella?

Geez, the story would be all over every newspaper and tv news program. Why don't the lives of children who die as a result of gunfire count as much as the lives of children who die of the flu or some other epidemic?

[gejohnston]

5. Where did you get your numbers?

does that include teen gang members? Suicides? 8x365.25=2,922.
the FBI says there were 1,363 murder victims under 18 in 2008. That is total murder rate regardless of weapon.
Does that include parents beating their children to death? CDC says
1,700 died from abuse and neglect.


http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0311.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/injury/index.html
http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

6. Would you please share...

...your definition of "child".

IMHO, anyone over 14 years old isn't really a child.

Please consult the cdc statistics for firearm deaths by age in table 10 (page 81).

For ages 5 - 14: 187
For ages 1 -4: 56
Infants: 9

This totals 252; about 0.7 children killed by firearms per day. Eight per day is just a lie.

[friendly_iconoclast]

9. Looks like one of our self-appointed zampolits messed up...

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

10. Yeah.

I'd say a lie is messed up, for sure.

[friendly_iconoclast]

11. The factual inaccuracy (deliberate or not) is a given. I meant something else.

That is, not posing as morally superior to their opponents, and instead trying to engage with fact.
When they do that, they lose.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

13. Agreed

The numbers I gave were for deaths arising from assaults. There are other firearm deaths as well; 50 suicides and 62 accidents.
Those all would total 364. Still a bit less than 1 per day.


As I recall the 8 per day included deaths for all "CHILDREN" under 20 years old. My totals mirror the CDC breakdown which, starting at the age of 5, groups by decade (i.e. - ages 5 - 14, 15 - 24...). I don't see persons over 14 as "children". In many states persons over 14 charged with crimes are prosecuted as adults. Not in my book.

[beevul]

7. I'm sorry, did someone say they didn't matter, or that they mattered less?

On the other hand, I do wonder how those numbers would inflate if we included those that weren't actually...children...in them, as brady does.

[rl6214]

8. What about those that die in car accidents every day?

Are their deaths worth less than those that die from gunfire? I'd be willing to bet it's more than 8 daily.

[Atypical Liberal]

12. It's really quite simple: they have to gin up fear.

If you take drug-related crime and suicides out of the equation, suddenly firearm deaths don't look so startling. That's just not good for business.

They want to include "children" engaged in the drug trade in their homicide numbers because all people here is "8 kids dying ever day from guns." That is very compelling - it pulls on the heart strings and makes you think we need to do something. If it turns out that some of these "kids" are teenagers engaged in the drug trade suddenly the empathy shuts down.

Likewise they want to use suicides to pump up the numbers, when everyone knows that people who are serious enough to use a gun to kill themselves are serious enough to find another equally deadly way. Sure, lots of people who attempt suicide and fail don't try suicide again, but I suspect that those people didn't have their hearts in it to begin with. Because let's face it, someone who decides to eat a gun is not fucking around - they mean business.

It's all about ginning up fear.