Statement from NRA on Background Checks

Here. They say there’s no deal, and they’ll oppose any expansion. This latest rumor appears on NBCNews.com, the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party:

Sources: NRA won’t oppose background check deal – if Democrats cede tough records fight.

Given the source, it makes you wonder who the “sources” are of which they speak. Take a look at what the bill does. Even without the records requirement, this is unacceptable. The records requirement is only one part of what’s wrong with this lousy bill.

 

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Do Background Checks Work?
  2. It’s Not about Background Checks
  3. New Executive Orders on Background Checks

18 thoughts on “Statement from NRA on Background Checks”

  1. Good. This bill is worse than Fiendstein’s AWB because of the amount of criminals it creates. Of course she wanted a possession ban, but thought it had a better chance of passing without.

  2. If you want to cede ground in one place, give me something worth it – like national reciprocity. This gives us nothing.

  4. I used to love the TV series “The X Files” Usually the lead in music ended with a catchy phrase. Most of the time it was “The truth is out there”. Sweep episodes had different phrases, one of which was “All lies lead to the truth”.

    As with many things the NRA does, their operating model is shrouded in secrecy and sometimes when the truth actually comes out, it makes you wonder how they ever get anything done. A good example of this is their “strange absence” in administrative efforts to repeal the ban on firearms in National Parks & Wildlife Refuges. What was really interesting is when NRA’s Capitol Hill Lobbyist was opposing the Coburn amendment to the credit card act which finally drove a stake through the heart of that ban. All the time, NRA was maintaining the mantra that they “opposed the ban” and were “working behind the scenes”.

    The latter is code for “we’re not doing $hit, but you can’t prove we aren’t and you can’t disprove our statement” It has the same meaning as a politician telling you they “support the 2nd Amendment” . Eventually, someone ratted out NRA’s hill lobbyist & forwarded their email correspondence to Redstate.com

    You see, sometimes the public statement of the NRA is different from what they’re actually doing. In the case of Tom Coburn’s NPS ban ending legislation, NRA was working behind the scenes; opposing common sense gun rights reforms and yes, supporting gun control.

    90% of the stories you see on the internet about the NRA supporting gun control are classic cases of “mutual combat” where the NRA rep & the grassroots persons refuse to get along. But some of the stories actually pan out and every once in a while you catch the NRA doing something that really doesn’t help. Their opposition of Coburn’s amendment is an example. There have been several state rifle & pistol association heads who have also shown to be ‘challenging’ to work with.

    Is the same thing happening here? We will not know until someone squeals and if they are playing the part of a bad actor, someone will squeal.

    So yes, probably the NRA is behaving and supporting us here, but just like politicians, you need to be calling NRA-ILA and absolutely insisting that no gun control is acceptable.

    1. A good example of this is their “strange absence” in administrative efforts to repeal the ban on firearms in National Parks & Wildlife Refuges.

      What?

    2. From what I understand about the guns-in-state/national-parks is that the NRA wanted to allow handguns and the like, but continue to ban rifles. (I think, that was a long time ago in interweb time) The reason being is they did not want to run the risk of park and wildlife officers seeing men and women with rifles walking around the parks and then get use to it because they wanted to make sure poachers couldn’t enter and leave state parks and still look like a normal person going about their day, thus drawing little to no attention to themselves.

      And thanks to google: “2. Concealed (and therefore concealable) handguns are less likely than rifles or shotguns to be used for poaching – unlike in national forests and BLM lands where hunting is frequent and legal.” Is the part of the letter the NRA sent to the Senator who wrote the amendment to the law in the first place.

      So basically, they wanted HANDGUNS to be allowed, while banning RIFLES, except when there is hunting going on.

      Also, if you are a member of the NRA, you probably just got an Email explaining that NBC lied. I just did on my cell phone and was coming here to tell Sebastian that, but Steve beat me too it.

      Everything the NRA does helps gun owners of all kinds. With the guns in national parks amendment they helped people who carry handguns, and helped hunters who want to continue to hunt game. You can’t be mad at them for 1 little thing they conceded in order to get something massive done. Now instead of getting eaten by a bear in a national park, or murdered by Mexican drug growers when you stumble into their fields, you have a fighting chance to shoot back and escape.

  5. But VCDL for example were involved long before NRA lifted a finger. VCDL launched the administrative effort, had ~4 dozen groups co-petitioning. NRA was not one of them. Nor was any NRA affiliate from any state. Why?

    It’s not because they weren’t invited. VCDL sent at least 3 requests to ILA, one of which was certified, return receipt, requesting NRA join VCDL in petitioning.

    When the administrative rule was approved, the 2nd time, NRA issued a call to support DOI’
    s restrictive “analogous public lands” and concealed only language. Public comments showed that more people supported VCDL’s language.

    Eventually, analogous public lands language was stricken from the administrative rule change, leaving the concealed restriction, but getting approved until the court intervened and issued the injunction.

    That long process worked up to Coburn’s amendment. Aside from NRA writing a timeline of events, what did they DO?

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88512175 The audio is priceless where Moran whines that it’s VCDL doing this.

    Now, look at what your link actually says Sebastian.

    in 2003…right about the time that the guy who ran ourcivilrights.org got letters from then sec’y Norton that guns were prohibited, and it went viral on packing.org. So they what? Asked several members to write letters to Norton? Really?

    I was at one of these meetings with DOI with Frazer, DAS Hoffman and a few others.

    Here’s a great section
    “Following his admission that some parks are unsafe due to drug trafficking, Kempthorne was pressed on the need to allow law-abiding citizens the opportunity to legally carry firearms in national parks for personal protection and whether he believed that Right-to-Carry doesn’t reduce crime. ”

    Yeah, I got the FOIA from Organ pipe cactus national monument. I guess being an NRA member they can claim credit for that? Anyway they were requiring legal waivers of personal safety indemnifying the .gov.

    So, it’s not that they never did anything, it’s that they did precious little and could have done way more. This is not to say they are bad actors or doing harm all the time. Instead, it’s just to point out that they operate quietly and often times not cooperatively. Publicly they were proclaiming support for repealing the NPS gun ban but what actual work can they show? emails, letters, phone records? what can they show that they were doing between 2003 & 2007?

    here is the link to restates emails – http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/07/13/shocking-emails-show-national-rifle-association-worked-to-prohibit-rifles-from-national-parks/

    So just because the NRA issues a statement saying they support or oppose one thing, doesn’t mean that’s actually what they’re working towards. They do great work training shooters and ILA does some good work as well, but their state affiliates have had some bad interactions over the years and ILA itself has made mistakes.

  6. I wonder. If we went onto a gun control forum (if there is such a thing), would we find the equivalent of this conversation going on over there?

    I ask in all seriousness. Knowing such potential weak points could be useful to us.

  7. There is nothing acceptable about this language or any portion of it. There isn’t anything there for NRA to compromise with and I think the rumors of NRA backroom compromise were distortions of events if not outright lies.

    Dave above illustrates just why some of the details of lobbying when publicized can be used to undermine the strength of the NRA – to the benefit of Bloomberg’s ilk.

    1. so, I’m not understanding SPQR. Are you saying that it would have been better for NRA-ILA to silently get away with trying to first undercut Coburn’s pro-gun language and gut it? And now that the information is in the public domain that benefits gun grabbers?

      I certainly see it differently. I think it that the previous incidents have come to light through pro-gun congressional staffers who were disappointed in the ILA’s actions and pushed that information out to the public. That helps keep sellouts from happening.

      It’s really too bad that NRA-ILA hasn’t been out there as fervently for national reciprocity in the past few years. I realize this is a legislative fight of a different nature and not of our choosing, but we had potential in the last session of congress and at least in my opinion they fought a lot harder for the protection of lawful commerce in arms years back.

      I keep reading the nbc article and keep coming back to the same question – how can I really believe them? If you do believe the nbc article, it’s possible that ILA knows the records or some other semantic issue is a ‘poison pill’ and will doom the bill. I think ILA deserves the benefit of the doubt here, but there’s no harm in contacting them to tell them that compromise here or on any other gun control bill is simply unacceptable.

      Has NRA-ILA promised to whack the ratings of so called A rated pols who go off the reservation?

  9. Their sources are cited as “…Senate aides familiar with the stalled negotiations.”

    Riiiiiight…aides working for which critters? And with what agenda?

    1. This is why you must assume anonymous sources are liars. If they were telling the truth, they wouldn’t need to hide.

      1. Well, the falsehood assumption is good – but the second sentence is faulty.

        Honest leakers might still need to be anonymous to not get fired – if the Senator they work for doesn’t want it leaked.

        1. We have laws to protect whistle-blowers, and exposing actual corruption can carry a real reward. Anonymous comments about discussions are always self-serving.

    2. “…Senate aides familiar with the stalled negotiations.”

      I think it’s pretty easy to guess exactly which office is home to the aides trying to rally up support for this gun control bill. You know, an office that needs to convince Republicans and moderate Democrats that there’s no danger whatsoever in crossing NRA members. And maybe narrow that down a bit more by picking out an office that would have aides who would think a great media outlet to call to reach America is MSNBC/NBC News. Do they honestly think we’re that stupid to not see exactly who is behind it when they say things like that?

      1. Yep…that’s pretty much what was happening in my brain when I read the “article” (it’s not long enough to be a novel, right? Maybe a short story?).

        Those words just jumped off the screen and slapped me in the face.

Comments are closed.