“Jennifer Epstein” - NRA won't meet with W.H. on guns
March 15, 2011 3/15/11
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51313.html
The National Rifle Association is declining to meet with the Obama administration to discuss gun control, signaling that the nation’s largest gun lobby isn’t willing to come to the table on a Democratic president’s terms.
“Why should I or the NRA 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 NRA’s executive vice president, in an interview with The New York Times on Monday. He cited Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the latter of whom has little to do with gun policy — as examples.
The Obama administration had previously indicated that a representative of the NRA would be present for at least one of the meetings on gun control that the White House and Justice Department have scheduled for this week.
President Barack Obama wrote in an op-ed published in Sunday’s Arizona Daily Star that he was “willing to bet that responsible, law-abiding gun owners agree that we should be able to keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few — dangerous criminals and fugitives, for example — from getting their hands on a gun in the first place.”
Obama said he wants to bolster some existing laws, for example by finding a way to more effectively implement the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, requiring states to provide better data to the system and introducing ways to make it “faster and nimbler.”
But LaPierre said he sees the president operating under a series of assumptions that are unfriendly to the NRA. “It shouldn’t be a dialogue about guns; it really should be a dialogue about dangerous people,” he said.
In a letter to Obama sent Monday, LaPierre and Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s lobbying arm, argue that the administration needs to improve its overall law enforcement mechanisms rather than singling out guns and gun owners.
“The government owes its citizens its most vigorous efforts to enforce penalties against those who violate our existing laws,” they wrote in the letter. “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.”
In his op-ed, Obama stressed that he believes his “administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners — it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.”
But LaPierre and Cox said they have seen no action from the Obama administration. “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.”
They would “welcome any serious discussion on policies that focus on prosecuting criminals and fixing deficiencies in the mental health system,” but “[a]ny proposals to the contrary are not a legitimate approach to the issue.”