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April 16, 2015 03:14 PM UTC

On radio, RMGO's Brown talks as if he owns the GOP Senate majority

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Doesn’t he? – Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Dudley Brown.
Dudley Brown.

Before she interviewed Dudley Brown, who spontaneously called her show this morning, KHOW 760-AM’s Mandy Connell told her listeners she had no opinion about Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, which Brown directs.

After the interview, Connell, an arch conservative, said she had an opinion–and I’m guessing you will too if you listen below.

In this case, Brown talked as if he has more of a right to interfere in gun legislation at the state Capitol than the Independence Institute has because RMGO bought and paid for the state GOP Senate majority.  And he went on about it, implying he’d organize primaries against five Republicans who voted against a violation of state Senate rules yesterday.

Connell started the conversation, which was first reported by Complete Colorado, with a question about why RMGO was opposed to raising the limit on magazine capacity from 15 to 30 rounds.

Then she asked, “So, why take out Dave Kopel?  Why go after him?”

Brown: Well, look, I don’t want to go into personalities on a public format. Dave Kopel is a wonderful writer. On strategy, he’s horrid! Dave Kopel is actually a Democrat. He has always advocated for compromise at every single turn. Every time we’ve ever had a gun bill in Colorado, he’s always advocated for compromise. And in fact, Dave Kopel is the one who fixed the Democrats mag ban so it did not include shotguns. He showed Senator Mary Hodge how to do it, mechanically. Probably being the one who enabled it to pass. Now, I have no qualms about being honest. But in politics, I don’t want it to be about personality. I want it to be about principle and strategy.

But, in all honesty, we simply don’t agree with Dave Kopel and never have, and for that matter, the Independence Institute, none of whom got these legislators into office.

It’s our organization and our PAC that spent the money to elect the legislature and take the Senate from the Democrats. We were the biggest funders of Republican candidates in the last election. Far bigger than the NRA. And let me be clear, I don’t know if this is – you could ask them, but my understanding is even the NRA opposes this compromise. Now, if the NRA opposes a compromise because it’s too squishy on the gun issue, that pretty much means that it’s as far left as it can be because the NRA usually buys into every compromise. In this case, my understanding is that they opposed it, too. Look there aren’t the votes to pass a 31 round ban –the repeal of the 30 ban, to make it 31. But there aren’t the votes for repeal, unless the Republicans take the House and the Governor’s mansion, neither of which are assured…

Now, to those people who say, “Wait a minute!  I want to be able to buy my 30 round magazine!”  I say, “Shut your pie hole and go buy one!”  There are many retailers who sell them right now.  They ignore the law, and God Bless them for doing so. And in many cases, your District Attorney and your sheriff won’t be involved in any cases against you, anyway…

Connell said, “You’re saying, ‘Go break the law.’”

Brown: I’m saying, “Do what you want.” But, the fact is, the ban, really — it’s like jaywalking. There really is no ban, right now. It’s largely a ban on some of the businesses who manufacture and didn’t want to be here, anyway.

“Now, wait a minute, Dudley, here’s the thing,” replied Connell.  “You just said earlier you don’t want to make this about personalities, but the Facebook post by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners says, “Does Bloomberg have a sleeper cell in Colorado?  All of a sudden, Dave Kopel is fighting as hard as he can to save the magazine ban.  Maybe it’s because he’s a lifelong registered Democrat and a Ralph Nader voter.”   So, that hardly sounds like you’re arguing the issue.  It sounds like a personal attack.”

Brown: Well, that actually, we didn’t start this.

Connell: “We didn’t start it” is not a mature response.

Brown: We didn’t start the battle, Mandy!  But I can guarantee you, we’re ending it….

Connell: You know, Dudley,  I’ve got to take a break.  But, one thing I will say about Jon Caldara is he is no man’s puppet…So, you are saying you don’t want to make this personal, and yet you keep making personal attacks.  I just want to point that out.

Brown: That’s because, frankly, we were ambushed in a dark alley…From our perspective, this is a principled strategy.  Yesterday morning, if you followed what happened in the House, we forced a recorded vote on the entire House floor on the full mag ban repeal, Senate Bill 175.  Kim Ransom and Justin Everett and a number of others forced the recorded vote. And they had the chance. The Democrats had the chance to break ranks and vote with us. And they didn’t, of course. And five Republicans voted wrong.  And all five of those Republicans are suspect, and in danger in the next primary…

Connell: I appreciate the phone call.  [hang up with Brown]  I now have an opinion about Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.

Who wouldn’t?

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18 thoughts on “On radio, RMGO’s Brown talks as if he owns the GOP Senate majority”

  1. Who pays Dudly’s salary? Smith & Wesson? Magpul? Is RMGO funded in anyway by the firearms industry, and if so, did Dudley just tell everyone he’s out and out buying politicians on behalf of that firearms industry?

    1. Dudley’s salary is paid by frantic fundraising from his paranoid base in Colorado, via Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, which buys votes and lobbies in the Colorado State legislature, and from the same demographic nationally by National Association for Gun Rights, a much larger organization which lobbies at the Federal level. 

      Both of them are considered “non-profit” organizations, and contributions to them are tax deductible. Quite a nice racket for  Dudley – as long as he can keep people afraid. 

      As far as direct contributions from, say, Smith and Wesson, there aren’t too many of those – they prefer to use front groups. Also one hand giveth, and the other receiveth – NAGR both donates and receives donations. 

  2. As long as the Senate Republicans that voted with RMGO on the gun bills continue to be led around by the nose, they can rightly be called Dudley Brown’s Beeyatches.

  3. The most interesting comment by Dudley is

    It’s largely a ban on some of the businesses that manufacture and didn’t want to be here, anyway.

    He is admitting that Magpul didn’t leave Colorado because of the clip limit. Magpul had already been shopping for tax breaks and were leaving for the best enticements. The timing of the gun bills gave them an excuse to cry “2nd Amendment,” but it was always all about the money.

    1. Bingo – in other words Dudley might as well have said: “All that stuff I say all the time? Never trust a damn word of it – I’m in it for myself and your wallet.”

  5. FYI, Jason, it was in the House where the rules (and the speaker) were challenged, not the Senate. I have a story in The Statesman about this tomorrow.

    In this case, Brown talked as if he has more of a right to interfere in gun legislation at the state Capitol than the Independence Institute has because RMGO bought and paid for the state GOP Senate majority. And he went on about it, implying he’d organize primaries against five Republicans who voted against a violation of state Senate rules yesterday.

    1. The vote was on whether or not to overrule the Speaker of the House on her ruling that Rep. Everett couldn’t change a committee vote to indicate that the bill to repeal the ban had passed when it actually had failed.  So all the Republicans who voted yes were voting to falsify a committee report…. just exactly how they can justify this is a mystery to me.

      1. voting to falsify a committee report…. just exactly how they can justify this is a mystery to me.

        Republicans were imbued by Saint Ronny the Divine with the ability to create their own individual truths…they didn’t try to falsify anything…just creating their own truth.

        See…they didn’t do anything bad….wink

      4. One thing I want to disabuse folks of is the notion that this is some bizarre attempt to rewrite history.  It is certainly bizarre. but it is also perfectly acceptable under the rules of the senate, if not the house.  In fact I’ve seen it happen a few times there.  After a second reading vote on a bill, it’s not a shocking tactic for someone to bring an amendment to the floor to amend the report of the committee of the whole (the body when it votes) to reflect that a vote that went one way actually went another.  Motions to amend committee reports are specifically mentioned in the senate rules (rule h under “motions and amendments”).  Such motions likely include Jedi mind tricks like the one mentioned above, I just can’t remembering seeing it.

        Things like this, passing laws nunc pro tunc (now for then– which allows passing a law now that says it was passed in the past to get around legal deadlines), stopping the wall clock to make a never ending day, happen frequently.  In this case, the speaker could just as easily have permitted the amendment under her discretion– she just di’n’t wanna.

  6. BTW, I’ve never listened to or heard Mandy Connell before, but good on her (in this one instance, at least) for standing up to, and not rolling over for, this insufferable lout.

  7. Even Laugesen (formerly of Guns and Ammo) trashed these guys at the Gazette:

    Forget Michael Bloomberg, Gov. John Hickenlooper and legislative Democrats for now. The bigger threat to gun rights in Colorado is Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, headed by political operative Dudley Brown.

    The organization raises money billing itself as more pro-gun than the NRA. It is notorious for launching primary challenges against pro-gun conservatives, replacing them with ineffective activists who reject incremental victories and the art of compromise. The organization clings to unattainable aspirations of all-or-nothing victories. It is the group that nearly sabotaged the recall against former Senate President John Morse, architect of three gun laws Democrats enacted in 2013 at a high political price.

    Many leading Democrats, since passing the laws, have conceded they went too far.

    “A lot of people, if they’d known how much commotion was going to come out of the high-capacity magazines would’ve, probably would’ve looked for something different, looked for a different approach,” Hickenlooper told Colorado sheriffs in 2014.

    That Tower of Pudding, John Hickenlooper, has nothing to fear. Why not just say Dems did the right thing for once?

  8. Mandy Connell may be an arch-conservative, but this liberal loves her for saying something that should be said a LOT more in our state and national capitols:

    “We didn’t start it” is not a mature response.

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