Remember the moment in 2000 when a high-ranking officer of the National Rifle Association said, somewhat ungrammatically, that if George Bush won the White House "we'll have . . . a president where we work out of their office"?

Well, apparently if William Pryor is approved for a federal judgeship, as Bush hopes, the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby will have a judge where they work out his office.

As this 2001 press release notes, the NRA honored Pryor a couple of years ago for consistently doing its bidding:

Attorney General Bill Pryor today received the Harlon B. Carter Legislative Achievement Award, the highest tribute conferred by the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action....

In presenting the award, NRA-ILA Executive Director James Jay Baker called Pryor "an individual who is fast creating his own historical marker as a defender of our freedoms."...

Baker cited a few of Pryor’s accomplishments:

"....When Eliot Spitzer, the anti-gun AG of New York, urged other AGs to support the Smith and Wesson settlement in purchasing firearms for law enforcement, General Pryor moved to block acceptance of the agreement by his 49 colleagues...."

This refers to Smith & Wesson's Clinton-era decision to agree to a set of gun control measures in return for exemption from gun lawsuits, a decision that infuriated gun-worshipers, who went on to make Smith & Wesson a pariah in the gun world.

"...In United States v. Emerson, he filed a friend-of-the-court brief, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and argued against using a federal law broadly to deny the citizens' right to bear arms."

This refers to a Texas case in which a man subject to a domestic violence restraining order -- after allegedly threatening his wife and child with a gun -- was not allowed to buy another gun; the man challenged the constitutionality of the Brady law.

"...In Alabama, Pryor helped draft and lobbied for the passage of laws that provide the firearms industry immunity from municipal lawsuits, preempted local gun control ordinances, and repealed the two-day waiting period for handgun purchases...."

Lovely.

And as the Gun Owners Of America point out in a June 24, 2003, press release, "it was Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor who mobilized attorneys general in 17 other states to sign a letter commending [John] Ashcroft" for asserting in 2001 that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own a gun. (The Supreme Court asserted in a 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller, that the Second Amendment guarantees the states a collective right to form militias, not the right of individuals to own guns.) It's not clear what purpose Pryor's letter served, except to brown-nose the attorney general of the United States. Incidentally, as the GOA press release notes,

...the Pryor letter references the work of John Lott which shows that putting guns in the hands of good people is good public policy. Why? Because "more guns [means] less crime."

If you're still unfamiliar with the disgraceful career of John Lott, go here.

All this, of course, is in addition to all the other nasty details of Pryor's record.