Brady blasts Keyes' stand on gun control
August 26, 2004
BY SCOTT FORNEK Political Reporter
Disabled gun control activist Jim Brady weighed in Wednesday on Republican U.S. Senate nominee Alan Keyes' declaration that the U.S. Constitution grants private citizens the right to own and carry machine guns, calling the remarks an "insane" call for a return to "the Al Capone days."
"He must have fallen on his head," Brady said of Keyes. "I was dumbfounded."
Brady, 63, former press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, was partially paralyzed in a 1981 assassination attempt. Brady, a native of Downstate Centralia, lives in Delaware, but sometimes makes endorsements in Illinois races.
Brady said if he lived in Illinois, he would vote for Democrat Barack Obama in the race.
"You don't hear Obama coming up with stuff like this," Brady told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I think he'll be Illinois' choice because we don't take kindly to going back to the Al Capone days."
A Keyes campaign official fired back that Brady is "sadly mistaken" because Obama's voting record in Springfield makes him "The Criminal's Best Friend."
Keyes, a former presidential candidate from Maryland, said Tuesday he supports a system in which people undergo different levels of training before they would be allowed to own and carry various sorts of weapons. Keyes said the Second Amendment grants properly trained Americans the right to "the kind of weapons our ordinary infantry people have access to," including machine guns.
Brady said he has never heard anything like Keyes' views in the years he and his wife, Sarah, have been active in supporting gun control measures. "He's not appropriate for Illinois," Brady said.
Brady said he still considers himself a Republican, except "when I hear s--- like this."
Keyes' campaign responds
Bill Pascoe, Keyes' campaign manager, responded that Obama's votes as a state senator from Hyde Park have earned him the title "The Criminal's Best Friend."
Pascoe said Obama supported a bill to require police to knock before executing search warrants; helped kill a measure to allow some battered spouses to carry concealed weapons; opposed tougher penalties on some gang crimes, and voted against a bill that would have banned early release for convicted sexual abusers.
"It is Barack Obama and his record -- not law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutional rights -- that is the real danger to public safety in Illinois," he said.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs defended the Democrat's record, saying it helped him win the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police.
"I think that speaks more eloquently than anybody in terms of who is on the side of protecting Illinois' families and communities," Gibbs said.
