The passing of James Brady sadly reminds us that firearms regulation has slid to the bottom of the legislative agenda during his lifetime. His twelve-year campaign following his head injury from an assassin’s bullet resulted in  landmark gun control legislation.  The eponymous Brady Bill required waiting periods and background checks for gun purchases, but it has been eroded by built-in limitations.

During the campaign to pass the bill, Brady mocked the NRA’s contention that the waiting period was an inconvenience to law-abiding gun purchasers. Describing his own helplessness to bathe and dress himself, he cracked, “I guess I’m paying for their ‘convenience.'”

Brady and his wife Sarah renewed their efforts to regulate the purchase of firearms following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011. They “sent recommendations to to a White House task force on preventing gun violence, calling for universal background checks” (New York Times, August 5, 2014).  They campaigned relentlessly until his death at age 73.

The ruthlessness of the National Rifle Association to confound every attempt, no matter how small, to regulate the purchase of guns is a disgrace to legitimate gun-owners. There is a broad expanse around the rights of a gun owner that the NRA is willing to defend to the death of countless victims of gun violence. Every attempt at regulation is characterized as an assault on the Second Amendment with a kind of paranoia that you do not want to encourage in someone licensed to own a gun.  They have championed the carrying of guns in schools and universities, thinking themselves protectors of citizens against the violence that permissive gun laws engender.

How many legislators and school children will be sacrificed before Congress stands up to the NRA? Why is the political courage to move against easy access to guns in such short supply?   What reasonable limitations on the purchase of guns will legislators make in defiance of the National Rationalization Association?

With the passing of James Brady, others must take up his cause and assist his widow, Sarah, to make gun ownership a privilege, rather than a right.  In fact it will take a battalion of courageous legislators to make sane gun control a reality.  Even a bi-partisan team may not be influential enough to overcome the stubborn and the craven who will defend against any regulation, no matter how weak.

James Brady committed his life to responsible gun ownership, but one man’s determination was not enough to thwart the gun lobby. Many others will have to step up to defend the innocent from “paying for their convenience.”