On last night's Daily Show, Stewart tried to make sense of the NRA convention speakers' convoluted logic. In conclusion: "Stop pretending that background checks are the last barrier standing between a free America and Obama-sponsored government mom-rape."
As Congress returns to a continued hiatus in the Senate's push for a return to expanded gun control legislation, opponents of new measures have hunkered down while advocates of stronger laws desperately look for a way back in.
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.
There will be an aspect of the NRA's convention — which opens today with an all-star list of speakers — that feels like a victory celebration. But after steamrolling over an ineffectual Organizing For Action, the NRA may have met its toughest opponent: Public Policy Polling.
The NRA has remained quiet while legislation to nullify federal gun laws has been introduced in dozens of states.
A 14-year-old middle school student appears to be staging some sort of intriguing political protest in Logan, West Virginia, where he was recently charged with causing a disruption after wearing an NRA T-shirt to school.
Today you can find on the website of The Washington Post, above articles reporting how the NRA successfully blocked new gun regulations, ads paid for by the NRA, telling Congress to "Get serious" about doing something about gun crimes. That's called "chutzpah."
The suicide of a 42-year-old Texas man at an NRA sponsored Nascar race over the weekend was the cherry on top of a critical maelstrom the racing league faced in the lead-up to the event. But it also brings up an important question: how did he have a gun in the first place?
After President Obama got emotional in Connecticut but refused to name the most powerful arm of "the gun lobby" that is bending back the administration's legislative push, Biden spared no words in describing the political tactics of the National Rifle Association.
By the NRA's logic, one "detail" in the 225-page "report" that the gun lobby's National School Shield task force has now corrected should make the whole report just about useless. Yes, there are enough school shootings that last week's NRA-funded research findings managed to find a school shooting that never happened.
Erosion takes time. With news that the Senate vote on new gun legislation will move out another week, opponents gain seven more days to wear down support for its elements — even for popular elements like new trafficking regulations.
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.
The National Rifle Association, the ongoing lobbying interests of which primarily exist for the promotion of buying more guns under the auspices of "safety," has apparently concluded that the way to keep schools safe is to bring more guns on campus, with its $1 million task force suggesting Tuesday that the government change laws surrounding gun-free zones and make the NRA's estimated $6.6 billion pipe dream a reality.
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.
Depsite rumors to the contrary, President Obama isn't giving up on gun violence. In an event at the White House on Thursday morning, the President averred that he continued to toil under the memory of the mass shooting in Newtown.
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.
From the details revealed in 2,700 pages of documents about the lead-up to Jared Loughner's attack on Giffords in 2011, it seems as though gun control advocates will find much more to strengthen their arguments than will the NRA.
Raise your hand if this news surprises you: The New York affiliate of the National Rifle Association sued the state on Thursday over a new set of gun control measures that it says puts citizens' in harms way.
Gun-rights advocates appear to be on the brink of killing a renewed assault weapons ban on Capitol Hill. But the movement's post-Newtown victory is hardly complete — and success may be a high water mark in the political unity of gun proponents.
New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica's one-source "exclusive" blaming the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre on video games and Lanza's seven-foot-long spreadsheet of death paints an unsubstantiated portrait just when the mental-health community and Congress are seeking answers on Lanza, video games, and truth in the face of NRA talking points.
All that attention the National Rifle Association leader has gotten since the Newtown shooting might be getting to him.
Universal background check legislation is stumbling forward in the U.S. Senate and collapsing in state legislatures, despite still-strong poll numbers. But the conventional wisdom on just how many American gun sales go unchecked might be based on a myth.
Gun victims will get a vote, but not the one an overwhelming majority of Americans say they want. That's because the NRA is winning the shouting match on Capitol Hill, and it may have just squashed cooperation in favor of a less strict bill.
Why would the controversial political advocacy organization sponsor a NASCAR race? The same reason a regional headache remedy would: It's cheap.
After a big hoopla was made from gun rights advocates over media outlets requesting publicly available information on gun owners, a Gawker FOIA request turned up evidence that the people who request public records on gun owners the most often are the gun rights advocates. We would suggest for very different, selfish reasons, too.
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 gun lobby's task force of "trained security officials" are putting together a new rubric, all in the name of "safety standards," according to Asa Hutchinson, the man tapped by the NRA to develop its proposal of putting an armed guard in every school in America.
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.
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 Bloomberg knows how to throw one heck of a metaphorical right hand. In his latest move in the fight for stricter gun control laws, the New York City Mayor's Demand a Plan initiative released their Super Bowl ad Sunday morning and it goes right after 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.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on gun violence in America today, and advocates from both sides — and their rivals on the committee — got plenty of opportunity to speak out.
Doyle McManus on immigration reform's moment, Ezra Klein on how immigration policy affects the economy, Matt K. Lewis on Twitter's overcrowding, Chris Murphy on the new NRA, and Sanjay Kumar on India's cultural emergency.
The U.S. Senate will hold its first formal hearing on gun control since the Sandy Hook school shooting, and there's the potential for some heated showdowns between the participants — Wayne LaPierre included.
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.
Jay Carney today called the National Rifle Association and their latest lobbying campaign centering on the president's daughters "repugnant" and "cowardly," but according to a new poll, Americans hate the NRA less than the entertainment industry
"Or a false-flag operation run by Michael Moore in an attempt to discredit responsible gun owners."
No matter what Obama says about putting armed police officers in schools, the NRA keeps criticizing him. Lost in all that shouting are the voices of people who'll actually work in such schools — the teachers.
As part of its new campaign, the NRA released a pretty ridiculous (but action-packed!) four-and-a-half-minute video late Wednesday afternoon. Let's take a look at how the push for putting armed guards in schools got the superhero treatment.
Guns don't kill kids — ignoring kids kills kids. That seems to be the message many upset Americans are taking away from the National Rifle Association's new lobbying strategy following its response to President Obama's gun announcement today, as the NRA and the White House prepared for a fight over legislation after Obama's executive actions.
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?
Gun advocates are already in a fit over one of the president's directive regarding healthcare professionals. Except that the order actually just preserves a legal expectation for doctors to report on their patients that has existed for 37 years.
An Oregon sheriff is citing his constitutional duty in accusing politicians of "attempting to exploit the deaths of innocent victims" to enact new gun laws that he thinks would harm his law-abiding locals, making him the gun-rights hero of a very big day for pro-gun America.
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