Sarah Brady

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Sarah Brady (born Sarah Jane Kemp on February 6, 1942) is the wife of former White House Press Secretary James Scott Brady. She was born to L. Stanley Kemp, a high school teacher and later FBI agent, and Frances Stufflebean Kemp, a former teacher and homemaker. She has 1 younger brothers, Bill.^[1]

She graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1964 and married Brady in Alexandria, Virginia on July 21, 1973.^[2] On December 29, 1978, their only son, James Scott Brady, Jr., was born.^[3] By that time, James Brady, who was raised Roman Catholic but divorced his first wife in contravention of canon law, and Sarah Brady, raised Presbyterian, had joined the Episcopal Church, where their son was baptized.^[4] Her husband sustained a permanently disabling head wound during the Reagan assassination attempt which occurred on March 30, 1981.

James Brady remained as Press Secretary for the remainder of Reagan's administrations, but this was primarily a titular role.

Sarah and James Brady became leading advocates of gun control, which they believe will reduce gun violence in the United States. They later became active in the lobbying organization (named Handgun Control, Inc.) that would eventually be renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and they founded the not-for-profit Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

1 Honorary doctorate degrees
2 Book
3 Controversy
4 References

[edit] Honorary doctorate degrees

Sarah and James Brady were each awarded a doctorate degree (of Humane Letters) by Drexel University in 1993.

[edit] Book

In 2002, Sarah Brady and Merrill McLoughlin wrote A Good Fight, Published by Public Affairs, ISBN 1-58648-105-3. According to a review of the book by a leading gun-control organization, Join Together, the book is about her entire life, including a battle with lung cancer.^[5]

[edit] Controversy

A controversy occurred after Sarah Brady recounted in her book that she had purchased a Remington .30-06 Springfield rifle with a scope and safety lock at a Lewes, Delaware, gun shop, for her son, Scott, "as a Christmas present" in 2000.^[6] Second amendment rights groups claimed that this action was a straw purchase, intended to avoid the NICS^[7]^[8]. While a purchase as a gift is not considered a straw purchase under US federal law, as long as the recipient is not prohibited from possessing the firearm; this is the same as any other private transfer^[9], private transfers are a common target of gun control advocates, who usually call this the gun show loophole, and would make these transfers illegal^[10]^[11].