When the National Rifle Association asks its members for their next contribution, they might want to disclose how much of that money will be spent to spy on gun violence victims and their families.

Mother Jones Magazine today reported that someone the gun violence prevention movement believed was a committed gun control activist was, in fact, a gun lobby spy.

Mother Jones focused on the activity of Mary McFate, also known as Mary Lou Sapone, a woman who has apparently led a double life for over twenty years, performing industrial espionage services for a variety of anti-environmental and gun lobby organizations – including the National Rifle Association.

A bizarre development to be sure, yet today’s report speaks for itself:

… During Sapone's ascent through the ranks of the gun control movement, she worked for the NRA, according to a business associate. In a 2003 deposition, Tim Ward, who had been president of the Maryland-based security firm Beckett Brown International, said that the NRA had been "a client" of Sapone's. (As a subcontractor for BBI, Sapone had planted an operative within an environmental group in Lake Charles, Louisiana.) According to Ward, at his request Sapone had introduced BBI to the NRA in early 1999. And that introduction quickly paid off. Billing records obtained by Mother Jones indicate that between May 1999 and April 2000, the NRA paid BBI nearly $80,000 for various services….

The article goes on to mention that Sapone was still working for an NRA lobbyist in 2007 and 2008. (Follow developments on Huffington Post here.)

Reading the story, one imagines a group of executives over at NRA headquarters huddled around a copy of The Art of War with a flashlight in a dark basement office, hatching a new cloak-and-dagger plot.

Whatever the case, it’s clear that some over there have too much money and no moral compass.

It is one thing to recognize, as CNN found last month, that 86% of the American people favor a waiting period before buying a gun, while 79% favor the registration of guns with the local government. That’s reason enough for the NRA to feel defensive.

It is another thing entirely to pay a woman to trade on the grief of gun violence victims and their families – to pay someone to pretend to be their friend and confidant – when in reality she was spying on their efforts to strengthen this country’s tragically weak gun laws.

Does this behavior reflect the NRA’s membership? I don’t think so. I think this represents the bunker paranoia of leaders who will resort to any means – by hook or by crook – to get any information they can get about the gun violence prevention movement, and that contradicts every statement they make about being a “civil rights� organization.

I don’t know what the NRA may have learned from Ms. Sapone/McFate’s spying.

Hopefully they were reminded that 32 people are murdered every day in America by gunfire. Another 52 survive a gunshot injury. Every day, 8 children and teens shot and killed, while another 48 survive their wounds.

Every year, 100,000 people are killed or wounded in the United States from gunfire.

But they didn’t need a spy to figure that out.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

On tonight's edition of Countdown she's "worser," but to many in the gun violence prevention movement, she's much worse than that:

(Begins at about 1:34.)

From one of the best fake news shows on Comedy Central:

Look up "sacrosanct" in the Oxford English Dictionary and you will find:

Of persons and things, esp. obligations, laws, etc.: Secured by a religious sanction from violation, infringement, or encroachment; inviolable, sacred.

As many of us were enjoying our Sunday afternoon this past weekend – perhaps coming home from church, or grilling out in the back yard – we heard reports that a gunman opened fire at a children’s production of “Annie� inside a church in Knoxville, Tennessee.

"Sacrosanct" doesn’t seem to mean what it used to. Many were saddened by the news, but few were surprised, because this is not a new event in America.

We’ve been here before.

In fact, CNN reported that this was the fourth shooting attack on a church in 15 months, the most recent being the Colorado church assault where a suicidal gunman was stopped by a former Minneapolis police officer who had been specifically tasked to be on the look-out for the shooter.

The accused gunman in Knoxville had a history of domestic violence and suicidal behavior, and had a protective order filed against him by his now ex-wife, back in March 2000.

One account reports that he once held a gun to his ex-wife’s head after “drinking heavily.� Apparently, he had also been charged with a DUI and refused to submit to a blood alcohol test.

If that isn’t enough, reports further say that he was motivated by a "hatred" of the "liberal movement" and targeted a church that to him symbolized advocacy of civil rights for African-Americans and gays.

When I say that we make it too easy for dangerous people to get guns in America, the accused Knoxville church shooter is exactly the kind of person I have in mind.

It seems this man couldn’t even get a job, yet he was able to walk out of an Anderson County, Tennessee pawnshop with the shotgun he would use a month later to kill two people, wound six others, and expect to be killed by police intervention.

On the other hand, it is important for us to take notice of the fact that the gunman could fire just three times because the shotgun he used was limited to three shells before he was forced to re-load.

Unarmed parishioners had the chance to tackle him while he paused. As bad as the Knoxville shooting was, it could have been much worse.

If we don’t have the laws to help keep firearms from a man like this, then clearly we are not doing enough in this country to keep dangerous weapons from dangerous people. Some say the answer is more private guns in church. But that simply accepts four church shootings in a year-and-a-half as “normal� in America.

We need to find ways to keep dangerous people from gaining easy access to firearms. There is much more we can do to protect our children and families and help prevent shootings that, if history is any guide, we can expect to happen again.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

The winner of last month's landmark Supreme Court decision is back in court.

According to the Washington Post:

... Without commenting on Heller's latest lawsuit, D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) said the new gun-registration law was enacted as emergency legislation shortly after the Supreme Court decision. He said the District will probably change the rules in coming months. "The council's action in introducing emergency legislation . . . was meant to be a quick response," said Mendelson, chairman of the council's Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. "It was not meant to be a comprehensive response."

The committee has scheduled a Sept. 18 hearing to discuss possible changes to the registration rules.

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