Colin Goddard, a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting and an assistant director of federal legislation for the Brady Campaign, told NOW With Alex Wagner Thursday there is a fissure emerging between the NRA’s leadership and its members. He said many NRA card carriers have been approaching the Brady Campaign saying “the NRA doesn’t represent me,” especially after NRA VP Wayne LaPierre’s press conference calling for armed police officers in schools.,
Goddard also said that his meeting with Vice President Joe Biden was “highly motivational” due to Biden’s “commitment to a comprehensive look at gun policy.”
The vice president met with representatives from the NRA Thursday, but a statement released by the gun rights group immediately after the event made clear that both parties did not see eye-to-eye on control measures: “We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment.”
Biden did show some optimism, reporting “a surprising recurrence of suggestions that we have universal background checks” after meetings with law enforcement officials and gun safety advocates on Wednesday and Thursday. He says his task force will have gun safety proposals to hand to President Obama by Tuesday.
Watch the video above to see more of msnbc’s Alex Wagner’s interview with Goddard and what he thinks this debate could produce.
Joshua Chaffee