On “The Kelly File” Thursday night, host Megyn Kelly spoke to the NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s Chris Cox about his organization’s decision not to attend President Barack Obama’s town hall meeting on gun control with CNN. Are you suggesting… we are creating a plot to take everyone’s guns away so we can impose martial law? “Look, I mean, I’m only going to be here for another year”. “When would I have started on this enterprise, right?”
Advertisement
“As a member of the House, I would have preferred that Congress pass improved gun laws”.
Obama’s tears, town hall, and gun control talking points have assaulted the news and social media this week, but is he reaching voters?
“And if the 90 per cent of Americans who do support common-sense gun reforms join me, we will elect the leadership we deserve”.
The hour-long program, called “Guns in America”, was broadcast two days after Obama delivered an emotional appeal to mitigate gun deaths through executive actions expanding background checks and investing in mental health.
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandamb told CNN that the organisation saw “no reason to participate in a public relations spectacle orchestrated by the White House”.
President Obama cried while listing all the schools where students have been shot, including Newtown, Connecticut, where twenty first-graders, aged 6 and 7, were killed in a mass shooting in 2012.
Mr Obama’s actions on guns have drawn major attention in the presidential campaign, with the Democratic candidates backing him and the Republicans unanimously voicing opposition.
Stiffer background checks are supposed to achieve his goal of reducing “gun violence”, despite the fact that, according to The Washington Times, “A record number of firearms background checks were conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2015 – equating roughly to 44 checks every minute”.
Obama, who said he had never owned a gun, has blamed Congress for being beholden to the National Rifle Association, a powerful lobby group that fights any action that might infringe on Americans’ constitutional right to bear arms. He said the NRA refuses to acknowledge the government’s responsibility to make legal products safer, citing seatbelts and child-proof medicine bottles as examples.
Among those on hand for the announcement was Gabrielle Giffords, the former Jewish Arizona congresswoman who survived a shooting attack in a Tucson suburb in 2011. Loder says some of the President’s proposals “have really very little impact in Iowa”.
Advertisement
“Folks will go to a gun show and purchase a whole bunch of firearms, put them in a van, drive up into Mike Pfleger’s neighborhood… open up the trunk, and those things are for sale”, Obama said. Cooper took issue with the word “conspiracy” and the president was not having it.
