April 03, 2013 08:32 AM UTC

Dudley Brown Slouches Toward Bethlehem

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: As if that wasn't enough, FOX 31's Eli Stokols:

Dudley Brown, the executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, has been added as a co-defendant in a lawsuit filed by a gay couple whose engagement photo was used without their consent in a political mailer last year.

Brown, who’s known for targeting GOP lawmakers who don’t adhere to strict conservative principles, allegedly planned and helped pay for the mailers distributed by Public Advocate of the United States, the group sued last fall by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of the gay couple in the photo and the photographer who took it.

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One of the more important stories of the recent epic battle over gun safety legislation in Colorado, which ended in Democratic victory on their most important priorities, has been the role played by the organization Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, and that group's leader Dudley Brown. RMGO's political influence up to now has generally been wielded on the far right of the Republican primary process in Colorado, where they have factored heavily in recent red-on-red controversies like the choice of hard-right Sen. Tim Neville over Jim Kerr in the Colorado Senate (Neville's son is now RMGO's lobbyist).

After the passage of gun safety legislation by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, Brown has vowed to take the fight outside his group's comfort zone in GOP intraparty politics, and "destroy" Colorado Democrats in 2014. It's noteworthy that apart from some initial outreach, the much larger National Rifle Association has largely taken a back seat to RMGO in Colorado's fight over gun safety bills this year.

As Think Progress reports, the growing profile of Dudley Brown and RMGO could become a major political liability.

As the Senate prepares to take up a comprehensive gun violence prevention plan later this month, gun advocates have amped up their already inflammatory rhetoric against any additional gun regulations. Ahead of President Obama’s visit to Colorado on Wednesday to promote the measure, one local gun organization promised to give him and other Democrats a hostile welcome…

“I liken it to the proverbial hunting season,” Brown says. “We tell gun owners, there’s a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats.” [Pols emphasis]

The analogy between elections and hunting is a favorite among conservatives; former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was widely condemned for her website’s map placing crosshairs over vulnerable Democratic districts in 2010.

Brown left the NRA in the 1990s because he felt the NRA was “kissing up to politicians.” The NRA, at the time, blasted Rocky Mountain Gun Owners as an “extreme right gun group” and called Brown the “Al Sharpton of the gun movement” for his inflammatory approach…

TP asserts that since that time the NRA has lurched right, and is arguably more aligned with the radical positions of the RMGO than ever before. It may be true, but we're not aware, for example, of the NRA having called for scrapping all background checks or screening for gun purchases at all as Brown has. Brown's interpretation of the Second Amendment, and the equivalent language in the Colorado constitution, is more or less that everyone, regardless of their record, has the right to any gun they want. To compare Brown's position to that of the general public on this issue, which supports universal background checks consistently above 80% in polling, is one good example of how far from the mainstream this man really is.

Nonetheless, as Politico reported yesterday afternoon, Dudley Brown's red-on-red warfare is going prime time. 

Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party favorite and possible 2016 presidential candidate, is raising money for a conservative gun rights group that’s targeting fellow Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

And when one congressman complained, the message from Paul’s camp was: too bad…

The group has blitzed the districts of Virginia Republicans Cantor and Rep. Scott Rigell with $50,000 worth of TV and radio ads accusing them of helping President Barack Obama pass gun control legislation.

[Rep. Scott] Rigell said he reached out to NAGR Executive Director Dudley Brown several times with no success. [Pols emphasis] In addition to the advertising, Brown has held two news conferences in Rigell’s district and one in Cantor’s.

Brown and the NAGR did not respond for a request for comment for this story.

The NAGR ads accuse Cantor, who has an NRA “A” rating, of “wanting to pass Obama’s gun control schemes.”

As you can see, Dudley Brown's threats to go after Colorado Democrats who voted for gun safety bills is arguably small potatoes compared to his already-underway campaign against such prominent national Republican leaders as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. In doing so, Brown appears to have the backing of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, in turn one of the national Republican establishment's most worrisome problem children. But be assured, he doesn't have enough backing in Republican circles to take on Eric Cantor. In fact, we would hazard that many Republicans who have donated to RMGO during the Colorado legislative battle would be shocked to know how much time Brown spends attacking fellow Republicans.

It makes you wonder where this is all going to end, doesn't it?

The beginning of that end may be in a brief blog post from the Denver Post's Lynn Bartels yesterday evening, revealing that Dudley Brown's biography on the RMGO website has been edited–Brown had claimed to have graduated from Colorado State University, but a la 2012 CU Regent candidate Matt Arnold, he did not in fact graduate despite five years in attendance. We are aware of several other significantly damaging items in Brown's past that may shortly be disclosed, and it's critical to understand that much of this counterattack on Brown will come from national Republican interests, with their own motivations for squashing Dudley Brown like a bug.

It's possible Colorado Democrats will find in 2014 a (metaphorical) smoking crater instead of threats made good.