Use the controls below the image to watch the video, or read the text of Paul Helmke's greeting below.

You can also check out Paul's new Brady Blog at www.bradycampaign.org/blog.

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Hi, this is Paul Helmke.

I want to talk with you briefly about what we were able to accomplish this year in Congress in the face of tremendous opposition, as well as the recent elections. First, thank you for helping us stop a number of dangerous bills. The gun pushers and their allies in Congress tried hard but were unable to do things like undermine the Brady background checks or repeal a law requiring child-safety locks, among many other bad bills.

With the recent elections, I am happy to say that the issue of gun violence prevention was in play in many races...that we won and the gun pushers lost...and that the momentum on this issue has now shifted.

The NRA lost more than 82 percent of the races where its endorsed candidates ran against Brady Campaign endorsed candidates.

When going head-to-head our candidates won four out of four U.S. Senate races and five out of five Governors' races. In the U.S. House, 109 candidates who were endorsed or were A-rated by the NRA were defeated. And, the NRA spent more than 2.1 million dollars of its money on losing candidates.

In all, we endorsed 345 candidates and won with 96% of them...reelecting folks like Governors Doyle in Wisconsin, and Blagojevich in Illinois, and Rendell in Pennsylvania...helping newly-elected Ben Cardin for U.S. Senate in Maryland and U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell in Washington State...and folks like Joe Sestak from Pennsylvania and Ed Perlmutter from Colorado for the U.S. House.

Thanks to these victories and many more, we can now move from playing defense to offense.

We have great opportunities now at the state and federal levels to push life-saving gun laws — things like universal background checks, including closing the gun show loophole, and getting military-style assault weapons off the streets!

You should be proud of what you made possible this year. Your financial support, your emails and calls to Congress, and your election activities — they made a real difference.

Thank you very much.