The President mouthed a few platitudes which sounded suspiciously like they were written by New York Mayor Bloomberg over the weekend.
The NRA wrote a response, which included the following:
As for enforcing the laws on the books, we strongly suggest you enforce those that actually take violent criminals off the streets.To start, we urge you to contact every U.S. Attorney and ask them to bring at least ten cases per month against drug dealers, gang members and other violent felons caught illegally possessing firearms.By prosecuting these criminals in federal court – rather than state court – strong sentencing guidelines would apply and charges would not be plea-bargained or dismissed, nor would criminals be released after serving only a fraction of their sentences. This simple directive would result in roughly 12,000 violent criminals being taken off the streets every year. Surely you agree that this would be a good first step.
Unfortunately, your Administration is currently under a cloud for allegedly encouraging violations of federal law.We suggest that you bring an immediate stop to BATFE's "Fast and Furious" operation, in which an unknown number of illegal firearm transactions were detected – and then encouraged to fruition by your BATFE, which allegedly decided to let thousands of firearms "walk" across the border and into the hands of murderous drug cartels.One federal officer has recently been killed and no one can predict what mayhem will still ensue.Despite the protests of gun dealers who wished to terminate these transactions, your Administration reportedly encouraged violations of federal firearms laws – and undermined the firearm industry's concerted efforts to deter straw purchases through the "Don't Lie for the Other Guy" program.We hope you agree with our belief that this burgeoning scandal merits a full and independent investigation.
There are additional steps you can take to prevent tragic events such as the Tucson shooting from occurring in the future.One of these is to call on the national news media to refrain from giving deranged criminals minute-by-minute coverage of their heinous acts, which only serves to encourage copycat behavior.If media outlets won't show a fan running onto the field during a baseball game because they don't want to encourage that behavior by others – surely they can listen to law enforcement experts and refuse to air the photographs, video messages, or Facebook postings of madmen and murderers.
We can always hope that Obama will take NRA's suggestions seriously.
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As a gun owner, a 2nd amendment devotee and a strong supporter of constitutional carry rights for Wisconsin, I agree with what the NRA has written, however, of late (10 -15 years) the NRA seems to have been more interested in pandering for power and money than actually protecting gun rights. I miss my subscription to the American Rifleman, but I quit because it seemed obvious that NRA lobby folks were more interested in getting invited to capitol cocktail parties than the rights of their members. They may be the biggest voice we have, but they haven't served the members well (in my opinion).
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