The leader of a radical Colorado gun rights organization has compared the opening of deer season to the next political election in his state.
Speaking with NPR, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO) founder Dudley Brown said he and his organization strongly opposed universal background checks and ammunition magazine limits, and threatened "political payback" for any Colorado Democrats who backed such reform measures.
"I liken it to the proverbial hunting season," Brown said. "We tell gun owners, 'There's a time to hunt deer. And the next election is the time to hunt Democrats.' "
Brown, who has been labeled "the Al Sharpton of the gun movement" by the National Rifle Association (NRA), told The Huffington Post in an email that his comments were meant "purely politically," and that the analogy was one he often uses with RMGO supporters and activists.
Using the slogan "Colorado's only NO-Compromise Gun Rights Organization," Brown and RMGO have worked hard the past several years to block gun control legislation in Colorado. Brown is also a leader of the National Association for Gun Rights, an umbrella group that coordinates state-wide efforts to block gun control.
After Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed three tough gun control bills into law last month, Brown warned of political retribution.
"The Democrats have just handed me a sledgehammer, and I get to walk through their china shop in the 2014 election," Brown said in an interview with the Denver Post.
Political rhetoric or not, ThinkProgress notes that using hunting as a political analogy has caused controversy before, perhaps most famously after being used by Sarah Palin in 2010. At one time, Palin's Facebook page featured a midterm election campaign map with crosshairs over the districts of incumbent Democrats who had voted for health care reform. The map was taken down after one of the lawmakers on the map, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.), was shot during a campaign appearance.
Dudley Brown speaks out on gun control at the Liberty Political Action Conference on Sept. 15, 2012:
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