On March 4, Gabby Giffords joined with Democrat lawmakers on Capitol Hill to push for background checks at gun shows as a way of “stopping violence.” The NRA responded by tweeting a Breitbart News report which pointed out that Giffords’s January 2011 attacker—Jared Loughner—passed a background check to acquire the Glock with which he carried out his attack.
On March 3, Comedy Central’s The Nighty Show with Larry Wilmore mocked Nevada Assemblywoman Michle Fiore (R) for wanting to arm women against sexual assault.
The history of gun control is one of a constant shift in focus, CPAC attendees learned at a breakout session on Saturday. Anti-gun advocates have moved from a steady push to cancel the Second Amendment on the federal level, to shifting to state level campaigns, and in some cases they are winning because of the left’s ability to buy the press.
In his speech at CPAC Friday, National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called the NRA “freedom’s safest place” and gave a pointed defense of his organization, the right to keep and bear arms, and rights in general, saying, “They are all linked.”
The New York Times reports that the ATF’s proposed AR-15 ammo ban has been in the works for over three years.
On February 26, a New York Times op-ed by Mary Lewis Grow of pro-gun control organization Protect Minnesota, cited terror attacks in heavily gun-controlled Europe and Australia as proof for why we need more gun control in this country too, and
Following the gun control push that began in July 2012 with the Aurora theater shooting and escalated after the December 2012 Sandy Hook attack, donations to the National Rifle Association rose to nearly $100 million. IRS disclosure forms show that
On February 24, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts wrote an op-ed suggesting that campus carry could actually increase sexual assaults on campuses around country.
On February 19, the Los Angeles Times reacted to the growing momentum for Campus Carry legislation across the country by referring to the NRA as “crackpots” and reminding the organization that it is the government’s “responsibility to protect the public through reasonable gun control laws.”
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) president Grover Norquist has written a letter to several members of the NRA’s board of directors fervently denying allegations of his ties to Muslim Brotherhood leaders as “conspiracies.”
On February 17, Breitbart News reported that Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America lost when Texas Governor Greg Abbot used his State of the State Address to make clear that Texas will be the 45th state in the country to allow the open carry of handguns.
With open carry en vogue today the way concealed carry was in the 1990s, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is criticizing the NRA, stating it “normalize[s] behaviors that are unsafe.”
On January 25, Slate magazine ran a column to disprove once and for all NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s talk about the need for Americans to arm themselves for self-defense.
Following a pattern similar to one we’ve seen in Slate, Politico Magazine, and The Washington Post, the Huffington Post is now contending that guns are used to shoot and kill bad guys only about “450” times a year, and the NRA mantra about good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns is plain hogwash.
The NRA-ILA is suggesting Gabby Giffords’ gun control group, Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS), ought to rename themselves “Anti-Gunners for Irresponsible Statistics” in light of their “bogus claim … about the number of firearm and car accident deaths among young people each year.”
With seven pro-Second Amendment bills before the Colorado state legislature on February 22—including some that would repeal certain gun laws instituted in 2013—Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America urged Democrats to dig in and oppose the repeal of gun control.
The Huffington Post says the NRA would be better served attending Bloomberg’s “gun violence” coverage conference rather than complaining about it.
On January 26, Aljazeera ran a special report on the state of gun control in America, which included a quote on how Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is making efforts to “undo the damage the NRA has done.”
On January 25 Slate magazine published an article revolving around the NRA’s warning that we live in a dangerous world best answered by owning a gun. They argue that the call to gun ownership for self-defense is false, that it is part of a great myth which has clouded the minds of Americans and resulted in a “misguided” expansion of gun ownership, and therefore, expanded crime.
Two Texas Legislators are proposing to amend the Texas Constitution to protect the “Right to Hunt and Fish.” Resolutions to create the amendment have been authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) and Rep. Trent Ashby (R-Lufkin). If passed, the proposal would place the issue on the ballot for voter approval in November 2015.
HBO’s Bryant Gumbel tells Rolling Stone magazine that the NRA is ‘a curse on the American landscape.”
As 2014 was a terrible year for the gun control lobby (GCL)–a year in which Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly, the Brady Campaign, and the machinations of Moms Demand Action were thoroughly rejected–the new plan for the GCL appears to be “Motion-Is-Progress.”
On January 15, Second Amendment supporters gathered in Olympia, Washington, in a show of opposition to Bloomberg-funded I-594. State Representative Matt Shea (R-4th Dist.) said, “We will not comply.”
On January 15—just over two months after winning a gubernatorial re-election with the NRA’s endorsement—Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (R) bucked the NRA and stood with Gabby Giffords in opposing a bill which would have “revised” his state’s concealed carry law.
On April 17 and 18 Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety will help fund a two day workshop to “enhance the practical ability of journalists to report on guns and gun violence knowledgeably, ethically, and effectively.”
