The presidential campaign is entering the home stretch, and once again the National Rifle Association leadership is firing its big propaganda guns at the Democratic candidates for president and vice-president.

The difference this year?  The guns have jammed.

The NRA leadership likes to talk a lot about freedom, but when it comes to their political advertising and direct-mail literature, they must mean the “freedom” to distort and deceive.

This week at least two national news organizations plus a leading political watchdog (along with the Brady Campaign) criticized a new NRA advertising effort being waged against Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Among other things, observers characterized this ad campaign as “a huge stretch” (The Washington Post), “misleading” (CNN), and one that “distorts Obama’s position on gun control beyond recognition” (FactCheck.org).

This is nothing new.  Congressional Quarterly and The St. Petersburg Times also recently gave the NRA their “Pants On Fire” award for being “not just misleading, [but] intentionally dishonest. That is, Pants on Fire wrong.”

What’s more, NRA leaders seem to forget that they used nearly the same deceptive vitriol on Sen. John McCain just a few years ago.

For example:

• Did NRA leaders just “forget” that they accused Sen. McCain of being “one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment“?

• Did NRA leaders just “forget” that they falsely claimed that “anti-gun groups … have teamed with U.S. Sen. John McCain to exploit terrorism in order to advance their gun control agenda“?

• Did NRA leaders just “forget” that they morphed Sen. McCain’s picture with Sen. Joe Lieberman, and falsely claimed that the “…McCain-Lieberman [bill to close the gun show loophole] is a cornucopia of poison bills that would allow a future anti-gun executive branch to shut down gun shows entirely“?

Of course they didn’t “forget.”  The fact is, for all their vaunted election prowess, they’re stuck with a C+ student as their “valedictorian” this year and there’s nothing they can do about it.

The NRA’s leaders are looking down the barrel of an election year pointed right at them and they’re scared to death.

Yet after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller, it should be clear to the American people, and specifically gun owners, that nobody’s going to “take your guns away.”

Sadly, NRA leaders seem to feel their only option is to make Americans so afraid that they can’t see the truth about the candidates – or the NRA’s pattern of deception.

Thankfully, the American people are catching on.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

According to this report, the arrested man is from Georgia, a state with a notoriously lax concealed carry permit system to which the State of Florida gives reciprocity.

Story in the Tampa Tribune:

An Atlanta man stopped for racing his Jaguar with a motorcycle at 90 miles per hour had a pistol on each hip and an alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit, authorities said.

Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Dawayne Maddux was patrolling Friday afternoon along Spring Hill Drive near Hastings Road when he spotted Gerald K. Deaguiar’s 2007 silver Jaguar racing a 2008 black Suzuki motorcycle at 90 mph, the highway patrol reported. Maddux overtook and stopped both vehicles.

Maddux cited the motorcycle driver, 22-year-old Gina M. Belmont of Spring Hill, for traffic violations and released her from the scene, the report said. But he suspected that Deaguiar had been drinking alcoholic beverages and began a DUI investigation. As Maddux started field sobriety tests on Deaguiar, the 39-year-old suspect told the trooper he was armed, the highway patrol reported. Maddux disarmed Deaguiar, locating two semi-automatic pistols – one on each hip and fully loaded with extra magazines, the report said.

…

Deaguiar has a concealed weapons permit….

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By the way, it’s important to note that people like Deaguiar – just by virtue of holding a concealed carry permit – are the so-called “law-abiding citizens” Rep. Tim Bearden has in mind to take their loaded, hidden pistols into an international airport.

Yet concealed carry permit-holders are caught doing criminal or stupid things on a regular basis.

Rep. Bearden might trust a man like Gerald Deaguiar to carry his weapon to the airport, but there’s no reason we should have to.

Thinking out loud here, but shooting one’s self is probably a good indication of firearm incompetence.

A short blurb in the Northwest Florida Daily News:

Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office deputies were called to the Fort Walton Beach Medical Center Sept. 12 for an accidental shooting after a man came in with an injury to his hand.

The injured man told the deputy that he’d been pulling Berretta out of his back pants pocket when the hammer of the weapon got caught on a hole in his pocket, according to the incident report.

The weapon fired and struck him on the right hand, just below his pinky.

He was treated and released.

Hopefully he was released without his weapon.

Examples like this continue to show the emptiness of the gun lobby’s “law-abiding citizen” rhetoric.

The fact this man probably never broke a law in his life didn’t keep him from accidentally shooting himself.

From KWCH (CBS-12, Wichita):

Days later it’s still hard for Gregory Rotremel’s family to accept. A man who knew guns, took gun safety classes and hunted, died doing something he’d done many times before.

“To know what went different this time I don’t know..definitely just a freak accident,” explains Kim Gale, Gregory’s mom.

Gregory was cleaning his gun in front of his fiance when it went off, hitting him in the head. “Somebody with that much going on in life never ever would have imagined that kind of accident would happen to him, you know.”

But that kind of accident is what Don Holman teaches people how to prevent. “People are getting a lot more involved in education of safety, how to use their gun how to draw them when to be safe and all that type of thing…a lot more interest in it these days.”

And that interest seems to be working. Numbers by the National Safety Council shows a 40% drop in accidental deaths since 1995….

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Any drop in accidental shooting deaths is more than welcome – in fact, zero such deaths should be our goal – but we must remember that according to the CDC, 789 people died from accidental gunshots in 2005, with another 14,678 wounded accidentally.

There is much more work to be done, and acknowledging that these and other incidents happen a lot more than people realize – even to those we least expect who never break the law – is essential.

Whoops. Hopefully he’s going to be OK.

No word yet if he is another “law-abiding gun owner.”

From the Muncie Star-Press:

City police this week investigated an accidental shooting at a New Castle restaurant.

Officers were called to Snedigars Rib House, 1914 I Ave., shortly after 2 p.m. Wednesday.

According to a police report, officers found the shooting victim, William Goodwin, in the restaurant’s kitchen, “holding paper towels on his wound.”

Goodwin told police “he was trying to unjam the (.25-caliber) handgun and it went off,” the report said.

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