NRA says Congress will not pass weapons ban

EILEEN SULLIVAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The pow­er­ful gun lobby is gaug­ing enough sup­port in Con­gress to block a law that would ban assault weapons, despite promises from the White House and senior law­mak­ers to make such a mea­sure a reality.

Sen­a­tors plan to intro­duce a bill that would ban assault weapons and limit the size of ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines, like the one used in the Decem­ber shoot­ing mas­sacre that killed 27 peo­ple, most of them chil­dren, in New­town, Conn. Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Dianne Fein­stein of Cal­i­for­nia has promised to push for a renewal of expired legislation.

The National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion has so far pre­vented pas­sage of another assault weapons ban like the one that expired in 2004. But some law­mak­ers say the New­town tragedy has trans­formed the coun­try, and Amer­i­cans are ready for stricter gun laws. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has made gun con­trol a top pri­or­ity. And on Tues­day Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden is expected to give Obama a com­pre­hen­sive pack­age of rec­om­men­da­tions for curb­ing gun violence.

Still, the NRA has faith that Con­gress would pre­vent a new weapons ban.

“When a pres­i­dent takes all the power of his office, if he’s will­ing to expend polit­i­cal cap­i­tal, you don’t want to make pre­dic­tions. You don’t want to bet your house on the out­come. But I would say that the like­li­hood is that they are not going to be able to get an assault weapons ban through this Con­gress,” NRA pres­i­dent David Keene told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., responded with a flat out “no” when asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” whether Con­gress would pass a ban on assault weapons.

Demo­c­ra­tic West Vir­ginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a life­long mem­ber of the NRA has said every­thing should be on the table to pre­vent another tragedy like New­town. But he assured gun own­ers he would fight for gun rights at the same time. “I would tell all of my friends in NRA, I will work extremely hard and I will guar­an­tee you there will not be an encroach­ment on your Sec­ond Amend­ment rights,” Manchin said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The NRA’s deep pock­ets help bol­ster allies and pun­ish law­mak­ers who buck them. The group spent at least $24 mil­lion in the 2012 elec­tions — $16.8 mil­lion through its polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee and nearly $7.5 mil­lion through its affil­i­ated Insti­tute for Leg­isla­tive Action. Sep­a­rately, the NRA spent some $4.4 mil­lion through July 1 to lobby Con­gress. Keene insists the group rep­re­sents its mem­bers and not just the gun man­u­fac­tur­ers, though he said the NRA would like indus­try to con­tribute more money to the association.

“We know what works and what doesn’t work. And we’re not will­ing to com­pro­mise on people’s rights when there is no evi­dence that doing so is going to accom­plish the pur­pose,” Keene said.

The NRA, instead, is push­ing for mea­sures that would keep guns out of the hands of the men­tally ill, until a per­son gets bet­ter. “If they are cured, there ought to be a way out of it,” Keene said.

Cur­rently, a per­son is banned from buy­ing a gun from a licensed dealer if the per­son is a fugi­tive, a felon, con­victed of sub­stance abuse, con­victed of domes­tic vio­lence, liv­ing in the U.S. ille­gally or some­one who “has been adju­di­cated as a men­tal defec­tive or has been com­mit­ted to any men­tal institution.”

States, how­ever, are incon­sis­tent in pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about men­tally ill res­i­dents to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment for back­ground checks. And, the Brady Cam­paign to Pre­vent Gun Vio­lence said some 40 per­cent of gun sales hap­pen with no back­ground checks, such as at gun shows and by pri­vate sell­ers over the Inter­net or through clas­si­fied ads.

Posted by AP News on Jan 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.