Posted on 03/15/2011 4:36:58 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
More than two months after the Tucson shootings, the administration is calling together both the gun lobby and gun safety groups to find common ground. But President Obama has no plans to take the lead in proposing further gun control legislation, aides say, and the nation’s major gun rights group is snubbing the invitation.
On Tuesday, officials at the Justice Department will meet with gun control advocates in the first of what will be a series of meetings over the next two weeks with people on different sides of the issue, including law enforcement, retailers and manufacturers, to seek agreement on possible legislative or administrative actions.
The effort follows Mr. Obama’s call, in a column on Sunday in a Tucson newspaper, to put aside “stale policy debates” and begin “a new discussion” on ways to better enforce and strengthen existing laws to keep mentally unstable, violent and criminal people from getting guns.
But the National Rifle Association, for decades the most formidable force against proposals to limit gun sales or ownership, is refusing to join the discussion — possibly dooming it from the start, given the lobby’s clout with both parties in Congress. Administration officials had indicated they expected that the group would be represented at a meeting, perhaps on Friday.
“Why should I or the N.R.A. go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?” said Wayne LaPierre, the longtime chief executive of the National Rifle Association.
He named Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has almost no role in gun-related policies, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We should ALL make it a point, this weekend, to take ONE person to a local range and teach them to shoot/introduce them to firearms and their American RIGHT.
For the record, I am, this Sunday. And have been doing just that for several years now, getting folks interested in shooting and firearms, helping them get their CCWs, pick out the “perfect” sidearm for themselves, etc..
We should all try to do this at least once a month. Think of our numbers, multiplying - people learning about their rights, and the joy of shooting and owning fine firearms. Once you put that bug in someone’s heart, it’s not likely to be taken away too easily. Especially the youngsters, who have been brainwashed most of their lives by now - realizing that there’s NOTHING bad or evil about firearms.
We get to undo a lot of Pavlovian conditioning.
And then think of how many Libs will be kept awake at night worrying about all those “new GUN owners” (oohhh...scary) out there.
Rub their faces in it. F*** ‘em all.
LFOD
Lets face facts, if you are a Democrat at this point in history you are either too ignorant or too evil to tolerate, and I do not hear you.
Marching to the tune of their leader and benefactor the father of all lies.
My future contributions to NRA rest on their ability to ignore the commie in the white hut.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this were staged to give the 2nd Amendment adherents a false sense of victory.
if many NRA-backed Democrats join the Republicans in putting a stop to this.
Back in the day, maybe, and that is a big maybe. Today, pro abortion and pro second amendment, somehow I’m left with nothing but questions. The NRA policy was stupid from the get go. Politics is not a one issue game and dems have multiple principles that do not fit the individual rights, mold. If you support the other side, you are part of the problem not part of the solution, and the NRA has been attempting to play this game for years, and is why I continue to support other organizations. I have tried and tried, and have been disappointed at every attempt. No more.
I have fought this tiresome argument too many times to bother to do it now.
Stay tuned to this gun control debate, I guess. We'll see if you are vindicated or proven to be dead wrong.
“Personally, I would only meet with him if he publicly and in advance promised to resign at that time.”
I’d meet with him if he’d show me his original long-form birth certificate in front of rolling cameras and microphones.
Good move on the NRA’s part. Zero would use a meeting for propaganda purposes.
Maybe I will finish paying on my life membership afterall.
Why, indeed?
We are past the point where there can be any compromise, and far past the point where there should have been any.
There are too infringements on the RKBA as it is.
Recent e-mail from the NRA:
_________________________________________________________
“National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA 22030
March 14, 2011
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
We read your editorial submission to the Arizona Star. However, to focus a national dialogue on guns – and not criminals or mental health issues – misses the point entirely. Americans are not afraid of gun ownership. To the contrary, they overwhelmingly support the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms. The primary reason why tens of millions of Americans own firearms is that they fear violent criminals roaming the streets undeterred.
We agree with your assertion that “Americans by and large rightly refrained from finger-pointing” in light of the shooting in Tucson. In truth, the professional corps of gun control lobbyists moved with lightning speed to exploit the tragedy. These included the Violence Policy Center (”In the wake of these kind of incidents, the trick is to move quickly”), the Brady Campaign (”Gabrielle Giffords Shooting ‘Inevitable’”) and Mayors Against Illegal Guns-MAIG (”Bloomberg, Mayors Outline Steps to Help Prevent Another Tucson Shooting”). Your article contains talking points nearly identical to the ones circulated by MAIG for weeks in pursuit of its longstanding gun control agenda. In contrast, it was the National Rifle Association that avoided “playing politics with other people’s pain” with our consistent response that only thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families were appropriate in the immediate aftermath.
We also agree with your statement that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. Your record as a public official, however, is anything but supportive of the rights of law-abiding gun owners. In fact, when Congress had an opportunity to voice its support for the basic right of lawful Americans to own firearms, you refused to join a bipartisan majority of more than 300 of your colleagues in signing the congressional amicus brief to the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller. In addition, you previously stated (and have never retracted) your support for both Washington, D.C.’s and Chicago’s handgun and self-defense bans that the Court rightfully struck down in Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. Further, you surrounded yourself with advisors who have advocated against the Second Amendment for years (Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel, to name just a few) and you nominated Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, one of whom has already attempted to eliminate the Second Amendment right entirely. More recently, you selected Andrew Traver to head the BATFE, despite his long-standing association with groups that support onerous new restrictions on our rights.
If you do in fact believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right, we suggest you demonstrate that in your policies and those of your Administration, which you have not done to date. Simply saying that you support the right to keep and bear arms is mere lip service if not put into action.
The government owes its citizens its most vigorous efforts to enforce penalties against those who violate our existing laws. The NRA has members proudly serving in law enforcement agencies at every level. Rank and file law enforcement want to arrest bad people – not harass law-abiding gun owners and retailers.
As for enforcing the laws on the books, we strongly suggest you enforce those that actually take violent criminals off the streets. To start, we urge you to contact every U.S. Attorney and ask them to bring at least ten cases per month against drug dealers, gang members and other violent felons caught illegally possessing firearms. By prosecuting these criminals in federal court – rather than state court – strong sentencing guidelines would apply and charges would not be plea-bargained or dismissed, nor would criminals be released after serving only a fraction of their sentences. This simple directive would result in roughly 12,000 violent criminals being taken off the streets every year. Surely you agree that this would be a good first step.
Unfortunately, your Administration is currently under a cloud for allegedly encouraging violations of federal law. We suggest that you bring an immediate stop to BATFE’s “Fast and Furious” operation, in which an unknown number of illegal firearm transactions were detected – and then encouraged to fruition by your BATFE, which allegedly decided to let thousands of firearms “walk” across the border and into the hands of murderous drug cartels. One federal officer has recently been killed and no one can predict what mayhem will still ensue. Despite the protests of gun dealers who wished to terminate these transactions, your Administration reportedly encouraged violations of federal firearms laws – and undermined the firearm industry’s concerted efforts to deter straw purchases through the “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy” program. We hope you agree with our belief that this burgeoning scandal merits a full and independent investigation.
There are additional steps you can take to prevent tragic events such as the Tucson shooting from occurring in the future. One of these is to call on the national news media to refrain from giving deranged criminals minute-by-minute coverage of their heinous acts, which only serves to encourage copycat behavior. If media outlets won’t show a fan running onto the field during a baseball game because they don’t want to encourage that behavior by others – surely they can listen to law enforcement experts and refuse to air the photographs, video messages, or Facebook postings of madmen and murderers.
Another step is to encourage people to report red flags when they see them. In the case of Tucson, a man clearly bent on violence was not reported to the proper authorities by those who had good reason to believe he had serious mental problems. That’s not a deficiency in our gun laws, it’s a deficiency in our mental health system – and should be treated as such.
In closing, we agree that gun owners in America are highly responsible. This is in large part due to the NRA’s 140 years of dedication to promoting safe and responsible gun ownership, an effort on which we take a back seat to no one. We welcome any serious discussion on policies that focus on prosecuting criminals and fixing deficiencies in the mental health system. Any proposals to the contrary are not a legitimate approach to the issue.
Sincerely,
Wayne LaPierre
Executive Vice President
National Rifle Association Chris W. Cox
Executive Director
NRA-ILA”
Excellent response to the asshole in the whitehouse from the NRA. Thanks for posting it Joe.
I thought it a worthy response, one everyone should read.
We’ll see if you are vindicated or proven to be dead wrong.
Let’s just take the NRA support of the lying harry reid for starters, I consider that alone to be vindication enough.
When the NRA stops supporting deceiving democrats, I just might have a small snippet of evidence they are on the right track, but until then I have a mountain of evidence they are in the business of NOT solving the ever present attack on the second amendment.
That attack is coming from the left. The left are called democrats. They are the problem, and supporting them went out with the last good democrat. I wouldn’t be able to tell you who the last good one was. Unless it was Mr Zell Miller.
...and before that who knows, and good of course is relative when one considers “rights”, beginning with the right to LIFE. Can I as a democrat not believe in the enumerated right to life, and expect someone to believe that I am pro second amendment? That IMHO is a bridge too far.
If a democrat is truly principled where the Constitution, and the second amendment is concerned, they will not need an NRA endorsement to retain the principle, or exercise it. We have observed many democrats and republicans for that matter where principle is no more than a little outward show, of what doesn’t exist upon further digging.
Your right...I just thought, oh wait!
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