“When they aren’t trying to steal our gun rights, they’re trying to steal our elections, but this time they got caught.”
So said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, following a report from the Federal Election Commission that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence just agreed to pay a $26,000 fine for failing to properly disclose more than $200,000 it spent in attempts to unseat two members of Congress during the 2000 election.
“According to the FEC, the Brady Campaign’s so-called Voter Education Fund didn’t report $111,777 it spent opposing Kentucky Rep. Ernest Fletcher, or the $99,731 it spent trying to beat Rep. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania,” Gottlieb noted. “Can you imagine the outrage that anti-gunners would be spewing if a gun rights organization failed to report more than $211,000 in campaign expenditures, especially if the money was spent to unseat some gun control fanatic?
“If nothing else,” Gottlieb observed, “this disclosure certainly bares one more hypocrisy of the extremist gun control movement. Anti-gunners traditionally complain that firearms civil rights organizations spend truckloads of money on elections. Here is a case where the Brady Campaign’s own expenditures on two specific races suggest that the gun control lobby deserves the same level of scrutiny it demands for gun rights groups.
“In just two races,” Gottlieb noted, “the anti-gun lobby spent more than $200,000, and then didn’t properly report it. What did they spend elsewhere around the country, what are they spending now, and is that being properly reported?
“The public deserves to know about this money, where it comes from, and where it’s going,” he stated. “Of course, we all know why such money gets spent. The gun control lobby wants its puppets in public office at all levels working to erase the firearm civil rights we all enjoy, whether we choose to exercise those rights or not.
“Now there’s proof” Gottlieb concluded, “that the extremist gun control lobby spends enormous amounts of money to steal elections the way they would steal our guns, by defeating candidates and veteran lawmakers who are dedicated to protecting all of our civil rights.”