One of the nation’s top gun lobbyists thinks that the Orlando shooting had little to do with gun control, and that any politician who tries to blame the gun lobby for the tragedy will “pay the price” for it.
Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said on ABC’s This Week Sunday that the people of the United States have a “God-given right to defend ourselves and firearms are an effective means to doing just that.”
“Politicians who want to divert attention away from the underlying problems and suggest that we are somehow to blame will pay a price for it,” he said.
Those problems, Cox said, don’t include gun control. Instead, they have “everything to do with radical Islamic terrorists.”
The shooting occurred early last Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Forty-nine people were killed and 53 more were wounded when Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old who pledged allegiance to ISIS, opened fire in the club. The shooting stands as the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Lawmakers Offer ‘Prayers’ For Mass Shooting Victims, Receive Large Checks From The NRAFollowing Wednesday afternoon’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, which left at least 14 people dead…thinkprogress.orgWayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, also criticized lawmakers who want to tackle gun control issues in the wake of the shooting. On Sunday, LaPierre said on CBS’s Face the Nation that President Obama and other pro-gun control lawmakers wanted to “divert” attention away from failed terrorism policies by pushing an assault weapons ban.
“You can’t save the country with politics,” LaPierre said. “It’s all being politicized with a politically correct White House’s nose and fingers in areas they don’t belong.”
Democrats have pushed gun control measures in the wake of the Orlando shooting. The first was Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) Hate Crime Prevention Act, which would prevent people convicted of hate crimes from buying guns. And on Saturday, Obama called for a ban on assault weapons. That ban would include the AR-15, a semi-automatic weapon which was used in the Orlando shooting — as well as in the San Bernardino and Sandy Hook shootings — and which the NRA has a particular fondness for.
“Being tough on terrorism — particularly the sorts of homegrown terrorism that we’ve seen now in Orlando and San Bernardino — means making it harder for people who want to kill Americans to get their hands on assault weapons that are capable of killing dozens of innocents as quickly as possible,” Obama said. “That’s something I’ll continue to talk about in the weeks ahead.”
The Republican who could take over Obama’s position in the White House doesn’t agree, however. Donald Trump released a policy platform on guns last year that has strong similarities to the NRA’s agenda.
“Gun and magazine bans are a total failure,” the policy reads. “Opponents of gun rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like ‘assault weapons,’ ‘military-style weapons’ and ‘high capacity magazines’ to confuse people. What they’re really talking about are popular semi-automatic rifles and standard magazines that are owned by tens of millions of Americans.”