=zencat,25 October 2005 - 19:30]
No, I'm implying this is a story planted by Pierce's press agent to continue to 
with Eon. Revenge. It is odd that Pierce's name is featured in all these stories. Craig is not just the "new Bond", he is the "replacement" or "successor to Pierce Brosnan."
They may sunning themselves by basking in Schadenfreude, but Brosnan's camp would hardly need to lift a finger to prod the tabloid press in that direction. The "Brosnan's successor" language is fairly common parlance, and not neccessarily suggestive of their hand behind the scenes. As the gun story gets picked up and recycled, other press outlets, out of laziness, will simply use that same wording, which is where the multiplier effect of the terminology comes in.
As was pointed out earlier in this thread, Craig was already a marked man in the tabloids due to his proximity to Kate Moss and Sienna Miller. The Bond angle is a gift from the gods from their perspective and they will lose no sleep over how these perceptions infect the wider media, having already been fanned by public reaction over a controversial casting choice. Many traditional news organs don't bother to devote much in the way of primary resources to entertainment news and will recycle / take dictation from elsewhere, even if it is of doubtful provenance.
Back on point, Brosnan's liberalism is well enough known to make him hardly the poster child for the NRA; I would imagine his views on handguns would be quite similar to Craig's and that he would find those sentiments not to have much relevance to how the Bond role is played in either his own case or in another actor's. If Brosnan or his surrogates were to shop around a "damaging" story on a successor, I don't believe it would be this one.
