Category Archives: NRA’s Wayne LaPierre

May 6, 2013 · 5:30 AM

NRA Head’s ‘Shameful’ Question Draws Ire

Wayne Lapierre Boston

The Huffington Post

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre sparked controversy on Saturday when he asked, ”How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?”

The comments came in the middle of his speech at the annual NRA members meeting in Houston, Texas.

LaPierre explained that during the Boston lockdown that took place while police were chasing the bombing suspects, “frightened citizens [were] sheltered in place with no means to defend themselves.”

He said:

“Imagine living in a large metropolitan area where lawful firearms ownership is heavily regulated and discouraged. Imagine waking up to a phone call from the police, warning that a terrorist event is occurring outside and ordering you to stay inside your home.”

“DISGUSTING. Shameful,” one Twitter user remarked. ”SERIOUSLY, BRO?” asked another.

As NBC’s Kasie Hunt points out, this is the first time that the NRA has linked the Boston Marathon bombings to guns.

LaPierre then accused gun control advocates of exploiting tragedies like the Sandy Hook school shooting.

“They use tragedy to try to blame us, to shame us into compromising our freedom for their political agenda,” he said. “No matter what it takes, we will never give up or compromise our constitutional freedom, not one single inch!”

Also speaking at the NRA convention were Second Vice President Allan Cors and chief lobbyist Chris Cox, who offered simliar rhetoric.

“Our gun rights are never safe,” said Cors.

Here’s the full transcript of LaPierre’s remarks.

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April 12, 2013 · 10:43 AM

Just Sayin’…

H/t: The Platzner Post

Memo:  With full knowledge that FaceBook has a way of exaggerating claims, I researched this and found that the term “mental condition” was indeed a slight exaggeration.  Here’s what I found.

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February 14, 2013 · 3:28 AM

The Nine Most Insane Quotes From The NRA’s New Apocalyptic Op-Ed

Think Progress

Wednesday afternoon, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre published a bizarre, paranoid screed on the Daily Caller outlining a series of wildly implausible scenarios in which (among other things) the police will cease to exist because of the deficit and al-Qaeda will provoke the government into stealing your guns. Here are the nine most absurd quotes from LaPierre’s piece:

1. Violent Latino Gangs Are Out To Get You: “Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States. Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world, and though the states on the U.S./Mexico border may be the first places in the nation to suffer from cartel violence, by no means are they the last.”

2. And They’re Streaming Over The Border: “The president flagrantly defies the 2006 federal law ordering the construction of a secure border fence along the entire Mexican border. So the border today remains porous not only to people seeking jobs in the U.S., but to criminals whose jobs are murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping.”

3. And So Is Al-Qaeda: “Ominously, the border also remains open to agents of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Numerous intelligence sources have confirmed that foreign terrorists have identified the southern U.S. border as their path of entry into the country.”

4. And Obama Will Use Them As An Excuse To Take Your Guns: “A heinous act of mass murder—either by terrorists or by some psychotic who should have been locked up long ago—will be the pretext to unleash a tsunami of gun control.”

5. If You Want Gun Safety, You Want Civilization To Collapse: “After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.”

6. Thanks To Obama, There Will Soon Be No Cops: “Meanwhile, President Obama is leading this country to financial ruin, borrowing over a trillion dollars a year for phony “stimulus” spending and other payoffs for his political cronies. Nobody knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is broke, there likely won’t be enough money to pay for police protection. And the American people know it.”

7. But The NRA Is Totally Not Paranoid: “Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face—not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival. It’s responsible behavior, and it’s time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that.”

8. It’s Just That The Collapse Of Civilization Is Right Around The Corner: “We, the American people, clearly see the daunting forces we will undoubtedly face: terrorists, crime, drug gangs, the possibility of Euro-style debt riots, civil unrest or natural disaster.”

9. And We Shall Overcome: “We [the NRA] are the largest civil rights organization in the world.”

LaPierre’s rant after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary was of a similar tenor.

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February 5, 2013 · 2:46 AM

NRA head LaPierre shocked that Fox News called him out

The NRA can’t hide behind the protective bubble of conservative TV and talk radio, without encountering some backlash from time to time, even from such an insular group…

America Blog

You know you have to be on the far fringe of right-wing extremism when you get called out by Fox News.

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre didn’t know what hit him when Fox’s own Chris Wallace attacked him over the tasteless and much criticized NRA TV ad that targeted the Obama girls.

And of course, as we found out later, the NRA ad was a total lie.  There are no “armed guards” at the Obama girls’ schools (and the NRA wasn’t referring to Secret Service).

In LaPierre’s world, the only answer to gun control is a police state where everyone has their own police defense team everywhere. Every man an army.  Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it?  And the Teabaggers support this NRA police state because…why? Does their obsession with guns mean more to them than freedom itself? How bizarre.

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February 3, 2013 · 2:58 PM

Fox News Host Blows Up At NRA Head: ‘That’s Ridiculous And You Know It, Sir!’

At times Chris Wallace manifests a few of his late father, Mike Wallace’s traits.  Not often, but now and then…

Think Progress

Fox News host Chris Wallace tore into National Rifle Association’s contention that President Obama and other elites are hypocritical for employing security guards to protect their children, while downplaying the importance of armed protection in preventing gun violence.

During a heated exchange with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre on Sunday, Wallace played a clip of a now infamous NRA ad criticizing Obama for relying on Secret Service to guard his children and asked if the organization believed that every child in America faces a threat similar to that of the Obama kids. LaPierre said that they do, leading Wallace to forcefully push back against the gun chief, saying, “that’s ridiculous and you know it, Sir!” Watch it:

Wallace went on to note that armed guards in school will not protect children “in the shopping mall, in the movie theater, on the street” and shamed the gun lobby for seeking to use class as a wedge in the gun debate. He noted that LaPierre himself relies on armed security guards and asked, “Does that make you an elite, and out-of-touch elite, because you have security?” “This idea of an elite class is just nonsense.”

Throughout his appearance, LaPierre maintained that universal background checks or limits on assault weapons would infringe on the rights of law abiding Americans and could never deter hardened criminals or gang members from obtaining fire arms. He insisted that only armed guards — the kind that Obama uses to protect his children — and increased prosecution of criminals could reduce gun violence.

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January 29, 2013 · 4:06 PM

NRA’s LaPierre: Universal Background Checks A Waste Of Time

National Rifle Association executive, Wayne LaPierre will say and do anything to protect the NRA’s hard-line stance on the issue of gun control…

TPM Live Wire

There’s no point in pursuing universal background checks for firearms purchases, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre plans to tell the Senate tomorrow, because bad guys will get guns anyway.

LaPierre is among those scheduled to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s gun violence hearing Wednesday. The NRA sent out his testimony Tuesday. LaPierre once again plans to tout the NRA’s call for armed guards in every school as well as the group’s call for loosen privacy laws the group says keep mental health records from being included in the existing background check system. But when it comes to expanding background checks to cover all firearms transactions, LaPierre will tell the Senate there’s little point.

“When it comes to the issue of background checks, let’s be honest – background checks will never be ‘universal’ – because criminals will never submit to them,” LaPierre’s testimony reads.

LaPierre will say the NRA is ready to pushback on gun control advocates calling for new legislation after Newtown.

“While we’re ready to participate in a meaningful effort to solve these pressing problems, we must respectfully – but honestly and firmly – disagree with some members of this committee, many in the media, and all of the gun control groups on what will keep our kids and our streets safe,” the testimony read. “Law-abiding gun owners will not accept blame for the acts of violent or deranged criminals. Nor do we believe the government should dictate what we can lawfully own and use to protect our families.”

 

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January 23, 2013 · 6:36 AM

NRA’s Bizarre Response To Obama Inaugural Address

Wayne Lapierre Nra Obama Response

Yawn…

The Huffington Post

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association, on Tuesday delivered a strange and strident rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s inaugural address, accusing the president of reducing the U.S. Constitution to “a blank slate for anyone’s graffitti” and lavishly praising a Supreme Court justice who famously ruled to limit gun rights.

Speaking at the annual Weatherby International Hunting and Conservation Awards in Reno, Nev., LaPierre zeroed in on a line in Obama’s inaugural address, delivered Monday, in which the president said “we cannot afford to mistake absolutism for principle.” The line was a subtle reference to the gun control debate, and the tendency of gun rights activists to interpret the Second Amendment as giving carte blanche rights to buy and carry any type of firearm anywhere.

“Absolutes do exist, it’s the basis of all civilization,” said LaPierre. “Without those absolutes, Democracy decays into nothing more than two wolves and one lamb voting on who to eat for lunch.”

Surprisingly, LaPierre renewed a widely criticized argument the NRA put forth last week in an attack ad featuring the president’s two daughters. “We believe that we deserve and have every right to the same level of freedom that government leaders reserve for themselves — to defend ourselves and our families with semi-automatic firearms technology,” LaPierre said. “We believe that if neither criminals nor the political class — with their bodyguards and security people — are limited by magazine capacity, we shouldn’t be limited in our capacity, either.”

Using terms better suited to a talk radio host than to the leader of the nation’s largest gun lobby, LaPierre said Obama’s address “makes a mockery” of the Declaration of Independence and the notion of “unalienable rights.” LaPierre repeatedly addressed Obama in the speech, delivered to a black-tie crowd at the hunting awards benefit dinner. “Words have meanings, Mr. President, and those meanings are absolute,” LaPierre said. “And when absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffitti.”

LaPierre told the crowd the president “doesn’t understand you. He doesn’t agree with the freedoms you cherish. If the only way he can force you to give ‘em up is through scorn and ridicule, he’s more than willing to do it — even as he claims the moral high ground.”

LaPierre quoted former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, a one-time Democratic congressman who served on the high court in the 1930s. “Justice Black understood the danger of self-appointed arbiters of what freedom really means, like President Obama,” LaPierre said.

But Black is a problematic hero for LaPierre. In 1939, Black and fellow Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously in a landmark gun control case, United States v. Miller, that the Second Amendment does not protect blanket access for citizens to any type of firearm.

The NRA and other gun rights groups groups are gearing up for a legislative battle in Congress during the coming weeks over a proposed ban on military style weapons, and limits on the size of gun magazines.

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December 27, 2012 · 12:15 AM

Far Right Website Newsmax Shoots Down NRA Israel Myth

This should tell you everything you need to know about their politics

This should tell you everything you need to know about their politics

The NRA can’t rely on truth to support their positions so they resort to such blatant lies that even a far right publication has to call them out on it…

Addicting Info

Whatever side of the gun control debate you’re on, everyone can agree: there’s something different this time. Whether we’ve reached a tipping point and we are collectively tired of the unnecessary violence or the crime was so shocking that it can not be rationalized, it’s clear that the usual bag of NRA tactics is not working.

Nothing has made this more clear than the outright rebellion from reliable right-wing sources. The New York Post  labeled NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre a “Gun Nut.” Fox News has been uncharacteristically subdued and now, even Newsmax, a website known only for being an outlet for right-wing propaganda has turned its back on the NRA in a bit of rarely seen journalistic integrity:

Israel’s policy on issuing guns is restrictive, and armed guards at its schools are meant to stop terrorists, not crazed or disgruntled gunmen, experts said Monday, rejecting claims by America’s top gun lobby that Israel serves as proof for its philosophy that the U.S. needs more weapons, not fewer.

Far from the image of a heavily armed population where ordinary people have their own arsenals to repel attackers, Israel allows its people to acquire firearms only if they can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger. The country relies on its security services, not armed citizens, to prevent terror attacks.

This is not a right-wing knee jerk defense of Israel in any sense. It is simply a statement of reality that stands in stark contrast to the NRA’s Wild, Wild west fantasy. Newsmax goes on:

“Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, ‘We’re going to stop it,’ and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then,” LaPierre said on the NBC News show “Meet the Press.”

Israel never had “a whole lot of school shootings.” Authorities could only recall two in the past four decades.

…

Israel didn’t mandate armed guards at the entrances to all schools until 1995, the Education Ministry said — more than two decades after the Maalot attack and two years after a Palestinian militant wounded five pupils and their principal in a knifing at a Jerusalem school.

…

Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor spelled it out.

“We’re fighting terrorism, which comes under very specific geopolitical and military circumstances. This is not something that compares with the situation in the U.S,” Palmor said.

The only terror we’re fighting on American soil is the one instilled by groups like the NRA itself. Newsmax goes on to fully describe how superior Israel’s gun policies are in relation to America’s in the sense that the Israelis take the time to know who is buying a gun, why and to check whether they are a risk to public safety. All of this would be considered “tyranny” but gun “rights” advocates. It’s OK for the rest of the country to live in fear of the next gun massacre as long as a well-funded minority tells us they have the right to buy as many guns as they want.

This particular episode of America’s addiction to guns has not yet played itself out and the NRA may yet prevail with its bag of distractions and nonsense. This time, though, it will not be with quite the same amount of automatic support from the usual suspects. Hopefully that means the tide is finally turning and America can reverse the “shoot first, ask never” mentality that has overtaken us.

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December 23, 2012 · 3:14 AM

Letter of Resignation Sent By Bush to Rifle Association

Being Liberal

Following is the letter of resignation sent by former President George Bush to the National Rifle Association: May 3, 1995

Dear Mr. Washington,

I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people.

Al Whicher, who served on my [ United States Secret Service ] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country — and serve it well he did.

In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi.

John Magaw, who used to head the U.S.S.S. and now heads A.T.F., is one of the most principled, decent men I have ever known. He would be the last to condone the kind of illegal behavior your ugly letter charges. The same is true for the F.B.I.’s able Director Louis Freeh. I appointed Mr. Freeh to the Federal Bench. His integrity and honor are beyond question.

Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government’s “go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens.” (Your words)

I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns.

However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.

You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre’s unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list.

Sincerely,

[ signed ] George Bush

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· 12:10 AM

New York Post, Daily News Blast NRA Speech (PHOTOS)

When Rupert Murdock’s, The New York Post cries foul, then you know the NRA is in trouble…

Talking Points Memo

Two New York tabloid newspapers on Saturday sharply criticized NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s Friday press conference, during which he called for armed guards to be installed in every school in America.

Here’s the Post:

 

 

And the Daily News…

 

Images via The Newseum.

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