Sen. Durbin rips NRA chief: You completely missed basic point of background checks

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois on Wednesday slammed National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre for claiming background checks  wouldn’t reduce gun violence.

During a the Senate Judiciary Committee’s gun control hearing, LaPierre argued that closing the so-called gun show loophole would only harm innocent gun buyers. He claimed criminals would be unaffected by the proposed policy because they would buy guns illegally.

“The criminals won’t go to purchase the guns, because there will be a background check, ” Durbin interjected. “We’ll stop them from the original purchase. You missed that point completely. I think it is basic.”

Durbin noted that Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl, was tragically gunned down on the South Side of Chicago on Tuesday. He pushed back against the notion that Chicago’s tough gun laws and high homicide rate were evidence that gun control was not effective. 

Durbin said the city of Chicago was “awash” in guns, where illegal firearms were confiscated at six times the rate of New York City. He noted that guns were flowing into Chicago from outside the city. More than half the guns used in crimes  have been traced to outside the state, particularly to Indiana and Mississippi.

“Why? Because the background checks  there, the gun dealers there are a lot easier than they are in other places. They end up selling these guns in volume, and they come up the interstate and kill wantonly on the way,” Durbin said, adding the issue of straw purchasers needed to be addressed. “I can point to one gun store — one gun store in Riverdale, Illinois — that accounts for more than 20 percent of the crime guns in Chicago. Straw purchasers buy the guns there and they end up in the hands of criminals in Chicago.”

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube by The Daily Kos, below:

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Senator Catches NRA Head In Epic Flip Flop

By Igor Volsky and Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) caught National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre in a significant contradiction during Wednesday’s hearing on preventing gun violence. Since the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut the nation’s most influential gun lobby has opposed the growing bipartisan push for universal background checks, arguing that such a policy would infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law abiding Americans. But as Leahy pointed out, the group has supported the reasonable background checks in the past.

Under current law, gun purchasers buying firearms from federally licensed dealers are subject to background checks. As a result, more than 2 million applicants have been prohibited from purchasing guns. Unfortunately, 40 percent of firearm acquisitions are from individuals who are not licensed gun dealers and do not undergo any background checks. Gun safety advocates have sought to close the loophole for years and in the 1999, the NRA backed this effort.

“We think it is reasonable to provide mandatory, instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show,” LaPierre said during a hearing held on May 27, 1999, in the wake of the Columbine High School shooting. “No loopholes anywhere for anyone. That means closing the Hinckley loophole so the records of those adjudicated mentally ill are in the system.”

Leahy pressed LaPierre on why the organization has since changed its mind:

LEAHY: Do you still, as you did in 1999, still support mandatory background checks at gun shows? Yes or no?

LAPIERRE: We support the national check system on dealers. We were here when one of your colleagues held the hearings in terms of who would be a dealer and who would be required to have a license. If you did it for live the good and profit, yes. If you did it for a hobby, no. [...]

LEAHY: You do not support background checks in all instances at gun shows?

LAPIERRE: We do not, because the fact is, the law right now is a failure the way it is working. You have 76,000 people that have been denied under the present law. Only 44 were prosecuted. You are letting them go. They’re walking the street.

LEAHY: Back in 1999, you said no loopholes anywhere for anyone. But now you do not support a background checks for all buyers of firearms?

LAPIERRE: The system the way it is working now is a failure. This administration is not prosecuting the people they catch. 22 states are not even putting the mental records of those adjudicated incompetent into the system. If they try to buy a gun, even if you catch them, and they try to walk away, you let them. They are criminals, homicidal maniacs, can’t mentally ill — and mentally ill. We all know that, maniacs and the mentally insane do not abide by the law.

Watch it:

While NRA leadership opposes universal background checks, its members back the change. Anational survey conducted by Johns Hopkins University found that “89 percent of all respondents, and 75 percent of those identified as NRA members, support universal background checks for gun sales. Similar surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup have also found background checks to be by far the most popular gun control proposal in the aftermath the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.”

UPDATE

Here is a copy of the ad the NRA took out in 1999 saying, “We think it’s reasonable to provide for instant checks at gun shows just like at gun stores and pawn shops.”

UPDATE

The NRA broke its commitment to support background checks for “every sale” andlobbied for a watered down provision in 1999.

Everything You Need To Know About The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre

By Josh Israel/Think Progress

The National Rifle Association’s CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre finally broke the organization’s silence about the Newtown, Connecticut shooting at a press conference today, delivering a long indictment of the media violence and its demonization of gun owners. LaPierre will also appear on NBC’s Meet the Press this Sunday.

LaPierre, who has been with the organization since 1991, has been one of the nation’s most visible and vocal opponents of gun control laws. Over his tenure, he has drawn bipartisan criticism for a wide array of extreme public statements — in addition to his most recent comments following the school shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Here are some of LaPierre’s more stunning statements:

1. Law enforcement are “Jack-Booted Thugs.” In March 1995, LaPierre sent afundraising letter to 3.5 million NRA members calling federal law enforcement agents “jack-booted government thugs” and arguing that “in Clinton’s administration, if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.” President George H.W. Bush resigned his membership in protest and LaPierre was forced to apologize.

2. Bill Clinton purposely tolerated violence in order to ban guns. In March 2000, the New York Times reported LaPierre “said President Clinton tolerated a certain amount of violence and killing to strengthen the case for gun control and to score points for his party. Mr. Clinton called the comments ‘smear tactics.’ Then Mr. LaPierre said Mr. Clinton had blood ‘on his hands’ because he had not enforced existing gun laws.”

3. Gun-Free zones are killing people. After the January 2011 Tucson shootings, LaPierre claimed “gun-free zones and anti-self defense laws that protected the safety of no one except the killers,” and said that “by its lies and laws and lack of enforcement, government polices are getting us killed, and imprisoning us in a society of terrifying violence.” This, despite the fact that the shooting had not taken place in a gun-free zone. He added, “These clowns want to ban magazines. Are you kidding me? But that’s their response to the blizzard of violence and mayhem affecting our nation. One more gun law on top of all of the laws already on the books.”

4. Obama spent a lifetime destroying the Second Amendment. LaPierrerefused to take part in discussions with President Obama’s administration after Tucson shootings to discuss possible ways to avoid future mass shootings. “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,” he asked.

5. Fast and Furious was engineered for “political advantage.” In March 2011, LaPierre said on a Fox News program he hosted that “someone in the government” engineered the failed Operation Fast and Furious “to seek political advantage.”

6. The UN is coming for American guns. In July 2012, LaPierre told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly that a proposed United Nations treaty regulating the global arms trade “says to people in the United States, turn over your personal protection and your firearms to the government.”

7. Obama will confiscate “our firearms.” In July 2012 — just three days after the movie theater shootings in Aurora, CO — LaPierre sent a paranoid fundraising letter warning that the group needed to defeat President Obama’s re-election. “The future of your Second Amendment rights will be at stake,” the letter said. “And nothing less than the future of our country and our freedom will be at stake.” . . . The solicitation letter says that Obama’s re-election would result in the “confiscation of our firearms.”

8. Obama’s inaction on guns is a conspiracy to win re-election. In September 2012, LaPierre suggested a novel theory as to why President Obama had not opposed gun rights in his first term. He said the administration’s inaction was “part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country…Before the president was even sworn into office, they met and they hatched a conspiracy of public deception to try to guarantee his re-election in 2012.”

9. All will be lost if Obama is re-elected. In February, LaPierre predicted that gun owners will rally en masse to defeat Obama in November. “All of what we know is good and right about America, all of it could be lost if Barack Obama is re-elected,” he said. “It’s all or nothing.”