On October 6 Jeffrey Zalles, the president of the Marin County chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said part of the solution to shootings in gun-free zones could be a license requirement for all bullet purchasers.
He suggested the gun control lobby might be able to make the idea palatable to defenders of the Second Amendment by putting the NRA in charge of the licensing process.
Writing in the Washington Post, Zalles said:
Because there are more than 300 million guns in private hands in the United States. Because the gun lobby is just too strong. Because gun-control proponents have fought for years with little to show for it at the federal level. But this can’t go on forever. We will eventually reach a tipping point whereby a majority of Americans, fed up and fearing for their safety, will finally work their will in the form of strict gun-control measures or even a rewrite or repeal of the Second Amendment.
But until such a time as the Second Amendment is rewritten or repealed, Zalles said licenses should be required to purchase ammunition and the NRA should oversee the program through which the licenses are issued.
Zalles explained his idea:
This license would take the form of a photo ID, and obtaining it could be as easy as watching a video, answering some gun-safety questions, paying a small fee and passing a background check. No doubt, gun owners would scream that such a requirement represented a big-government intrusion into their privacy and constitutional rights. But what if the National Rifle Association, and not the government, was responsible for issuing licenses?
He then took a jab at the NRA by suggesting the role of overseeing the issue of such licenses “would simply represent a return to the organization’s roots” of “[promoting] gun safety” versus a “political” agenda.
Breitbart News previously reported that Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) took the same tack against the NRA, accusing the group of abandoning support of “gun safety” in exchange for the notoriety the group now enjoys. Ironically, earlier this year no less a gun control proponent than astronaut Mark Kelly (husband of wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords) praised the NRA’s Eddie Eagle gun safety program as a tremendous benefit to children.
On April 14 Kelly tweeted: “I don’t agree w/ the NRA on some big issues, but they deserve a lot of credit for teaching kids about gun safety [via] Eddie Eagle.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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