COLE: Gun group raffles off assault rifle, good sense and a shot in the dark

When this is all over — when assault rifles are finally banned, high-capacity magazines can’t be purchased over the Internet or anywhere else and gun show loopholes are finally closed nationwide — I’ll call Dudley Brown and thank him personally. His hard work will go a long way in keeping our streets safer and our policy in-line with 21st century thinking worldwide.

But Dudley’s not a gun control lobbyist.

He’s not even the director of a bleeding heart liberal organization bent on keeping guns away from people, and he probably doesn’t know how to spell compassion nor would he want to.

Brown is the executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, a “no-compromise Second Amendment” group, and my new best friend when it comes to showing where common sense falls in the debate over gun control.

Brown’s group is hosting a lunatic lottery to give away a Colt AR-15 Model 6920 this month, donated from Jensen Arms in Loveland, to sign up members for his group.

The assault rifle is similar to the ones used to massacre others in Newtown and right here in Aurora. How generous of him and his group.

“Dear Fellow Patriot,” he writes in an e-mail promoting the giveaway. “RMGO is facing dozens of battles in the Colorado legislature this year, so we need to increase the size of our pro-gun army.”

Besides the poor and ill-timed use of the words of “battle” and “army,” the dozens he’s referring to don’t actually exist.

At the time of his e-mail, the Colorado Legislature had three — just three — bills filed relating to guns. The first two bills, one to allow business owners to legally shoot intruders and another allowing school districts to allow persons to carry concealed weapons with proper permits, don’t seem to be battles at all for a pro-gun organization. The third, a bill defining an unloaded gun as a deadly weapon in the same way a baseball bat and knife are considered deadly weapons, could be a mild threat.

But Brown’s argument isn’t rooted in reality anyway. He could have easily given away a 30-06, a common hunting rifle that didn’t massacre dozens of innocent people in the past few months, or he could have given away a muzzle-loading musket, a firearm that was common when the Second Amendment was actually written. But he’s not. His giveaway of an AR-15 is perhaps as callous and indiscriminate of others’ feelings as the rounds fired from its air-cooled muzzle.

It’s a disconnected idea for a group disconnected from reality.

Brown and others like him are making themselves perfectly clear when it comes gun legislation: irrational fear of the future necessitates poor decisions in the present.

Brown didn’t return my calls for comment and I doubt he will. At his best, he’s a poor ringleader, drawing attention to his circus of followers by offering a mass-murder tool that has little to no sporting value at all. At worst, he’s feeding a paranoia that thinks the best way to effect change in the country is by threatening to rain bullets from everywhere.

It’s an ineffective strategy.

Common sense falls on the idea that military-grade weapons should be in the hands of the military — not given away in some sort of deranged raffle.

Thanks Dudley. I can’t wait for all this to be over.

Reach Managing Editor Aaron Cole at 303-750-7555 or acole@aurorasentinel.com