The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the nation's leading gun control advocacy group, has produced a parody video with comedy site Funny or Die which it hopes will inject new energy into the movement to restrict firearms. The video promotes a parody website named Crim Advisor which rates states on how easy the Brady Campaign believes it is for criminals to buy, carry, and sell guns within their borders. The gun control group believes the joke ad may help revive its efforts, the Guardian reports.
The Brady campaign’s offbeat tactic is an attempt to breathe new life into a push for gun control that has largely stalled across the country, particularly at the federal level, despite the sense of horror and mourning that followed the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut in 2012, where 20 elementary school children and six school staff were gunned down by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.
After a bill to mandate universal background checks on those buying guns ground to a halt in Congress within months of the massacre, gun control advocates have switched their attention to individual states, where there has been more progress in strengthening gun laws.
"The majority of gun laws enacted in America happen in statehouses across the country, not in the halls of Congress, where recent gun control efforts have stalled," the Brady campaign admitted on Thursday in its annual assessment of the gun law landscape.
Despite the fact that it is illegal in every state for a felon to buy, sell, and possess a firearm, the ad features a pair of criminals explaining how Crim Advisor helps "felons and fugitives" figure out which states are easiest for them to "buy, carry, and even traffic guns."