• NRA exec accuses Obama of gun 'charade' at State of the Union

    Addressing the National Wild Turkey Federation in Nashville, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre doubles down on his call for armed police or guards in every American school.

    By Michael O'Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News

    The National Rifle Association’s CEO on Thursday accused President Barack Obama of orchestrating a “charade” to dismantle gun rights in his State of the Union address this week.

    Wayne LaPierre, the gun lobby group’s executive vice president and CEO, used a speech at a National Wild Turkey Federation conference in Nashville to decry the push for stricter gun laws made by Obama at the conclusion of his annual policy address on Tuesday.

    “For our Second Amendment freedoms, Mr. President, we will stand and fight throughout this country as Americans for our freedoms,” LaPierre said to applause. “We promise you that.”

    The gun rights advocate complained that “the words ‘school safety’ were nowhere to be found” in Obama’s address and renewed his call for funding to put an armed guard in every school in America. (Obama did speak of the need to “protect our most precious resource:  our children.”)

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    “It was only a few weeks ago that they were marketing their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting schoolchildren from harm,” LaPierre said.  “That charade ended at the State of the Union, when the president himself exposed their fraudulent intentions. It’s not about keeping kids safe in school.… They only care about their decades-long, decades-old gun control agenda.”

    Obama closed the speech by referencing victims of gun violence and victims’ families in attendance at his speech, forcefully repeating that those victims at least “deserve a vote” on the gun control measures proposed by the administration in the wake of the deadly December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

    "Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote," Obama said to sustained applause. "The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence –- they deserve a simple vote."

    LaPierre has been as dogged as ever, though, in resisting those proposals, taking to conservative media in recent days to make his point. Writing Wednesday for the Daily Caller, LaPierre evoked a dystopian vision of a world without guns in the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Sandy in New York.

    “After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia,” LaPierre wrote. “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.”

    However, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the time there were no murders committed during the storm or its very immediate aftermath.

  • NRA to again push armed guards for schools in Senate hearing

    By Kasie Hunt, NBC News

    The National Rifle Association will appear Wednesday at the first congressional hearings on gun violence in the wake of Newtown – at the invitation of Democrats.

    Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy invited the group to testify alongside Mark Kelly, whose wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot at a Tucson supermarket in 20 while she was greeting constituents.

    The NRA strategy, at least according to prepared testimony, remains the same as it has since 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.: push for armed guards in schools and insist that measures like an assault weapons ban and universal background checks won’t help matters.

    “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,” chief NRA lobbyist Wayne LaPierre plans to say, according to prepared testimony released in advance of the hearing.

    Universal background checks – closing the loophole that allows private gun sales to people who haven’t had a criminal records check – is one of the gun safety measures most likely to pass the Senate. Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican, told Tulsa TV station KRMG that he is working with Democrats to craft a bill that would mandate the background checks.

    NRA officials, though, insist that won’t keep guns away from criminals; they also point to studies showing the assault weapons ban in effect from 1994 until 2004 didn’t reduce crime. Gun safety advocates say that 10 years wasn’t enough time to measure the ban’s effectiveness, among other arguments.

    LaPierre will instead tout the NRA’s gun education programs and argue for measures that will help states put armed guards in schools.

    “It’s time to throw an immediate blanket of security around our children.  About a third of our schools have armed security already – because it works,” he will say.

    And he will repeat calls to strengthen measures aimed at keeping powerful weapons away from the mentally ill.

    “We need to look at the full range of mental health issues, from early detection and treatment, to civil commitment laws, to privacy laws that needlessly prevent mental health records from being included in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System,” LaPierre plans to say.

    The NRA is also claiming increasing membership: The group claimed 4.2 million members just three weeks ago, but the Wednesday testimony says it has 4.5 million members now.

    Democrats asked LaPierre, Kelly and Baltimore County Police  Chief James Johnson to appear at Wednesday’s hearing. Republicans on the committee called Colorado academic David Kopel and attorney Gayle Trotter as witnesses.