WASHINGTON - Gun-control advocate Sarah
Brady bought her son a powerful rifle for Christmas in 2000 - and
may have skirted Delaware state background-check requirements, the
New York Daily News has learned.
Brady reveals in a new memoir that she bought James Brady Jr. a
Remington .30-06, complete with scope and safety lock, at a Lewes,
Del., gun shop.
"I can't describe how I felt when I picked up that rifle, loaded
it into my little car and drove home," she writes. "It seemed so
incredibly strange: Sarah Brady, of all people, packing heat."
Brady became a household name as a crusader for stricter
gun-control laws after her husband, James, then the White House
press secretary, was seriously wounded in a 1981 assassination
attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan.
Brady writes in "A Good Fight" that the unnamed gun shop ran
federal Brady Law and Delaware state background checks with great
fanfare.
The book suggests that she did not have her son checked, as
required by Delaware state law.
"(W)hen the owner called in the checks, it seemed to me he spoke
unnecessarily loudly, repeating and spelling my name over and over
on the phone," Brady writes.
Amy Stillwell, a spokeswoman for The Brady Campaign to Prevent
Gun Violence, said the federal Brady Law does not require background
checks for intrafamily gun gifts.
Stillwell said she did not know whether her son was checked under
the state law. The Delaware Department of Justice says the state
does not have an exemption for family gifts.
"Scott is not a convicted felon, and he is not prohibited from
owning a gun," Stillwell said. "Scott Brady could walk into a store
and buy a - he is not a prohibited purchaser."
Delaware Justice Department spokeswoman Lori Sitler said the
purchase could be illegal under state law if Brady did not also say
who she was buying the gun for and submit his "name, rank and serial
number" for a full check.
"You can't purchase a gun for someone else," Sitler said
yesterday. "That would be a 'straw purchase.' You've got a problem
right there."
Anti-gun control advocates were surprised to hear of Brady's
foray into their world.
"We hope that it's innocuous and there's been no laws violated,"
said James Jay Baker, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle
Association. "It's obviously interesting that Sarah would be
purchasing firearms of any kind for anybody, given her championing
of restrictive guns laws for everyone."