Shen reports: "Former NRA lobbyist and founder of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Dudley Brown compared deer hunting season with election season, when gun owners would be free to 'hunt Democrats.'"



Former NRA lobbyist and founder of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Dudley Brown. (photo: Denver Post)

Head of Gun Organization: 'Time to Hunt Democrats'

By Aviva Shen, ThinkProgress

s 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.

In an interview with NPR, former NRA lobbyist and founder of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Dudley Brown compared deer hunting season with election season, when gun owners would be free to "hunt Democrats":

Brown complains universal background checks are just a step towards identifying gun owners so the government can seize their weapons, and he calls the 15-bullet limit on ammunition clips arbitrary. He's promising political payback in next year's election that could cost Colorado Democrats their majorities.

"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."

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. Since then, the NRA has been pulled much farther to the right and is much more aligned with the "extreme" beliefs of RMGO. For instance, both the NRA and RMGO believe there is a UN conspiracy to take away guns. In response to more strident calls for gun regulation after the Newtown school massacre, the NRA and Republican lawmakers have also warned of "tyranny" and compared Obama to Hitler and Stalin.