The NRA just had an amazing victory in defeating a bill to require universal background checks on gun purchases — something it endorsed 15 years ago — and yet the speakers at its 142nd annual convention in Houston sounded awfully bitter. Here's how Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and more defended freedom against those sissies in the White House.
What would you call a person who spends days on end going from one senator's office to another to push for a piece of legislation? If he's paid it's one thing. If he's a family member of a crime victim, it apparently comes down to politics.
Wayne LaPierre was MIA at the NRA's even Tuesday, replaced by moderate-sounding Asa Hutchinson, just the latest move by the gun lobby to repair its image now that its legislative victories have been all but secured.
How can the National Rifle Association oppose something as checking whether someone is legally barred from buying a gun before they purchase one, i.e. universal background checks? Because the NRA is not reasonable anymore.
Despite a brief spike in interest after the Sandy Hook shootings, Americans care less about gun control than ever, even as gun control passes in Connecticut and stumbles through the Senate. Sounds like a great time for the NRA to stage another PR stunt! And that's exactly what the NRA is doing on Tuesday.
On Thursday, President Obama gave a gun control speech and Mayor Bloomberg's group released new gun control ads, all while the NRA runs offensive ads about the president's daughters and rambles about how Bloomberg "can't buy America." That's true. It's much more cost-effective to buy Congress.
All that attention the National Rifle Association leader has gotten since the Newtown shooting might be getting to him.
Republican senators inserted several gun rights measures into a bill to fund the government through September, including one that says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives must attach a disclaimer to any gun data saying it "cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about fire-arms-related crimes."
During Sen. Diane Feinstein's hearing on a new assault weapon ban, the NRA account returned to the point that regular old handguns and "things other than firearms" have been used in mass shootings. Wait a minute, guys: A handgun is a firearm.
The National Rifle Association has no patience for gun-grabbers' anecdotes — yes, one crazy person with a gun can kill a lot of people, but most gun owners are not murderous sociopaths. Instead, what the NRA likes is cold, hard hypotheticals.
LaPierre stuck it straight to Obama, calling the President a master of "deception" on more than one occasion — and accusing Obama, falsely, of doing "nothing... with protecting one child in any school in this country."
Americans don't just need guns to fight criminals anymore, says the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre, Americans need more guns to fight the weather.
Michael Lewis on Goldman Sachs, Steve Kornacki on the remaking of the GOP, Charles C.W. Cooke on Black History Month, Jennifer Vanasco on pedophilia in the Boy Scouts, and Michael Tomasky on the paranoia of the NRA.
"I am convinced that as these things are discussed, that we're going to come out about where we have come out in the past," NRA president David Keene said Thursday. But the NRA is not where it was in the past, not even the recent past. Specifically, 1999.
Gun advocates spent their Wednesday fighting on Capitol Hill for the right of female civilians to carry semi-automatic assault weapons while their compatriots on the right are mourning the decision to allow female soldiers to carry guns on the battlefield.
His remarks came minutes after former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords implored the Committee to "be courageous" in addressing gun violence.
Wayne LaPierre will say some controversial things in his testimony before Congress Wednesday, and while he's said some shocking things since the Newtown massacre sparked a gun control debate, the archives show that LaPierre has actually toned it down in the two decades he's been the face of the National Rifle Association.
The National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre will testify before the Senate about gun violence on January 30, and it should be fun to watch, because LaPierre never fails to put on a good show.
The NRA itself, however, remains very popular among its own members, according to the NRA.
While bucking one of the administration's few proposals on firearms that Republicans might actually accept, Wayne LaPierre offered no new ideas — indeed, old ideas — during a speech that reveals the backwards thinking behind the gun lobby's future.
Two NRA ads this week spread the false assertion that Washington's Sidwell Friends school has 11 armed guards stationed to protect its students. Here's how they got it wrong.
The National Rifle Association did not have a good election last fall — a mere 0.83 percent of the campaign cash it donated went to races with the outcomes it wanted — and yet the political clout of the gun lobby is accepted as veritable fact.
"Or a false-flag operation run by Michael Moore in an attempt to discredit responsible gun owners."
It was Washington conventional wisdom that Obama would do nothing on guns once the outrage over the Newtown shooting quieted. But he signed 23 executive actions meant to reduce gun violence, and began a major push in Congress. What changed?
As the White House prepares to unveil its gun-violence proposals Tuesday, the NRA has released an attack ad calling President Obama an "elitist hypocrite" for having armed protection of his daughters but not believing that putting an armed guard in every public school in America is the only way to stop school shootings.
President Obama is looking at issuing 19 executive actions on gun control, and while gun enthusiasts fear a gun ban that can't happen by executive order, there is one proposal that should make the gun lobby plenty nervous: allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence.
The only unpopular policy idea to help stop gun violence is the only one that's really been enacted since the Newtown school shooting.
"What I will not do is have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people," President Obama said at his press conference Monday.
The National Rifle Association's proposal to put armed guards in every single school in America was unimaginably tone-deaf, but it's not unimaginable. After a public outcry for security, we've had a massive nationwide effort to hire thousands of security agents for low wages relatively recently. You might know it as the Transportation Security Administration.
The National Rifle Association promised to lobby Congress to block the proposals offered by Vice President Joe Biden's gun control commission, which will issue a report to President Obama on Tuesday.
Tactical Response CEO James Yeager made his best case against gun control (and inadvertently, the best case for it) on Thursday by posting a video in which he promised to "start killing people" if President Obama uses executive orders to regulate guns.
Call it ammunition for the gun lobby's meeting with Vice President Joe Biden this afternoon, but that's what the NRA is telling Politico. We have some questions.
The National Rifle Association will promise to offer "meaningful contributions" to the gun control debate after the Newtown first-grader massacre. That contribution has turned out to be a series of cliches which the NRA will offer Vice President Joe Biden Thursday in its meeting with his gun commission.
The Drudge Report seemed to reach a new level of gun-confiscation hysteria Tuesday afternoon when it used photos of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin to illustrate a headline about "executive orders." But the controversial display wasn't actually new at all.
Vice President Joe Biden's use of the words "executive action" has the National Rifle Association and the Drudge Report freaking out. But, relax guys: President Obama can't do that much on guns with an executive order. If he wants a big change in gun laws, he still has to go through Congress.
You do not need to know the physics of how armor-piercing bullets work to have an opinion about whether they should be legal for civilians to buy. But having a basic knowledge about how these guns work is a good thing.
Eric Singer on how the fiscal cliff affects paychecks in Congress, Jonathan Chait on Obama's fiscal caving, Bill Keller channels the NRA's president, John O'Sullivan on mass firings at Russia's Radio Liberty, and Gordon Chang on the Japanese economy.
Almost line-by-line, what the NRA chief said at his press conference Friday was posted all over Facebook by anonymous gun lovers since the Newtown shootings. Just look how closely they match up.
Membership is up, they tell us. People are giving more than usual, they say. We'll be back on Friday, they promised. But what's the truth about America's most powerful interest group after the massacre in Newtown?
It's unclear why the National Rifle Association decided to break its silence on the Newtown shooting on Tuesday afternoon. Maybe they finally mustered up the courage to face the public.
The gun lobby will soon break its public silence on the school shooting, Fox News reports. Here's an early indication of its plan.
As the gun debate reaches a fevered pitch, from Washington to Twitter to Newtown and back again, in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, here is some much needed context.
Today in Ad Watch: President Obama looks back to when people were making fun of Mitt Romney, Romney finds a disappointed Obama voter, Democrats call Linda McMahon too rich to care about old people, Richard Mourdock tries to tie his opponent to Obama, and the NRA says somebody's gonna take your guns away.
If you really want to deeply understand the role guns play in American life, you'll have to read more than just Jill Lepore's "Battleground America" in The New Yorker, but that's still an excellent starting point.
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