NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre disappeared from the public eye for a month following an aggressive call-t0-arms in response to the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT. He resurfaced last night, and clearly, little has changed. Not only did LaPierre push back on restrictions to high-capacity magazines and assault rifles, but he forcibly rejected universal background checks. For the record, polls find roughly 9 in 10 Americans support universal background checks to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.
Among the reasons given for opposing background checks, LaPierre says they involve “standing in line and filling out a bunch of bureaucratic paperwork, just so a grandfather can give a grandson a Christmas gift.” Beyond that inconvenience, LaPierre suggested, the government has ulterior motives. He claimed background checks are essentially a cover in order to compile a “massive federal registry” of guns, which which would only be used “to either tax ’em or take ’em.”
The NRA is stonewalling even the widely-supported gun safety measures, using paranoia–that the government is orchestrating a wide-scale gun-grab–as its justification.
Watch LaPierre’s comments in the video above, and see what Alex Wagner and the NOW panel believe is fate of gun safety legislation in Congress.
Joshua Chaffee