Brady's Helmke in Columbus to award gun control politicians; Takes opportunity to dance in the blood of officers injured Monday

By Chad D. Baus

When blood is running the streets, there always seems to be a group of gun ban extremists ready to dance in it. This time, they are dancing in the blood of two Ohio law enforcement officers.

On Monday, two Columbus officers were injured when a marijuana-growing suspect fired on them with a semi-automatic AK-47 rifle.

Just two days later, Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence President Paul Helmke staged a press appearance in Columbus, and claimed that the incident should should serve to remind people how "easy" it is to buy "assault weapons."

From the Columbus Dispatch article entitled "Shooter incident stirs gun debate":

"I think you saw the consequences of that Monday," Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a Columbus appearance yesterday evening. "We are making it easy for these things to happen."

The gun lobby stance of treating shootings like unpreventable natural disasters, Helmke said, has politically paralyzed the country from taking simple measures to protect the public, such as background checks to make sure felons or the mentally ill can't buy guns.

"Other countries have figured it out; we can figure it out, too," Helmke told a group of about 50 people gathered to honor Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman and City Council President Michael Mentel "for standing up to the gun lobby's extremist agenda" by enacting an assault weapons ban in 2005.

But in 2008 the Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-3 to strike down such city bans, including one prohibiting concealed weapons in Columbus city parks.

"You don't need an AK-47 to shoot a deer across the street at Broad and High," Coleman said during the Downtown ceremony, noting that lawmakers made it legal to carry guns into city parks but not into the Statehouse.

"There's a limit, and I think Ohio has gone beyond the limit. … We need to strike it up again and make this a national movement."

Helmke, who was in town to award Coleman and Mentel for their failed attempts to disarm law-abiding citizens via gun control laws, neglected to mention or explain why, during the time the Mentel Ban was in effect, incidents with so-called "assault weapons" continued to occur in the City of Columbus, including a high-profile case involving former Ohio State Buckeye running back Maurice Clarett.

Not to be outdone in the blood dance, the anti-gun Freedom States Alliance issued a press release which quotes a "study" conducted by the radical extremists at the Violence Policy Center claiming that "one in every five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty between January 1st, 1998, and December 31st, 2001, were killed with assault weapons." Even if these figures were true, the study would only go further to prove that gun bans do not work to stop criminals. You see, during the years mentioned in the VPC "study", 1998 to 2001, the federal Clinton Assault Weapons ban was in effect!

The truth, of course, is that Helmke, Coleman and Mentel aren't just trying to take guns out of criminals' hands. They are trying to take them out of your hands.

Again, from the Dispatch:

"What they want to do is fix it so that nobody can have guns," said Gerard Valentino, secretary of the Buckeye Firearms Association.

"Unfortunately, there are going to be criminals who do things with guns." But the 36-year-old Pickerington resident questions why city officials never mention the cases in which citizens use guns to protect themselves and save lives.

Coleman and the city "are doing everything they can to limit people's ability to protect themselves," Valentino said.