NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre challenged President Obama to a one-hour, one-on-one debate on guns and gun rights in America.
“Americans are growing more and more sick and tired of Barack Obama,”LaPierre said said Jan. 13. “They’re sick of the sanctimony, the narcissistic celebrity, the dishonesty and the growing number of failures. But more than anything, they have never feared for America’s future like they do right now.”
He then referenced Obama’s newly announced executive gun controls:
Seven years ago, he set out to fundamentally transform our country. And when it comes to the runaway power of the executive branch over Congress, the courts, the people and the rule of law … the president has laid waste to the America we remember.
Now, he has chosen what he misunderstands most about America—the Second Amendment, gun owners and the NRA. Against the will of Congress, and in defiance of our constitutional system, the president unilaterally decreed that anyone—any lawful citizen—who sells, trades or gifts even just one firearm, might be vulnerable to arrest and charged with a felony.
Arrest. Prosecution. Fines. Prison.
That is how they play the game. In the fog of vague rules and mysterious definitions, honest Americans are made vulnerable—forced into a maze of government bureaucracy and the hiring of lawyers to face the threat of consequences.
When the law is a mystery, all that is left is fear.
LaPierre also referenced the gun bans for some Social Security beneficiaries, which have been co-opted into Obama’s executive gun controls. He pointed to the irony of Obama’s America, where “millions of peaceful, law-abiding gun owners tiptoe in fear of their government, [while] the killers who terrorize our cities prey upon the innocent with no fear of repercussion whatsoever.” LaPierred observed, “Through a deliberate lack of prosecution, President Obama has made America a sanctuary nation for felons, criminal gangbangers, drug dealers, repeat offenders and illegal aliens.”
He added:
If the president really wanted to make Americans safer, he’d pick up the phone and tell his Justice Department to flip Chicago upside down until every criminal with a gun, criminal gangbanger with a gun and drug dealer with a gun is arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned to the fullest extent of the law.
THAT would make a difference. THAT would save lives. But he’s had seven long years to issue THAT order … and he has failed. And that is why Americans don’t trust the president—because he has proven, time and time again, to be unworthy of our trust.
Then LaPierre intimated that the NRA did not accept an invite to Obama’s January 7 gun control town hall because they refuse to”get suckered into any of Obama’s fixed fights” or sit on their hands in the audience while Obama fields “pre-screened questions that lead to…long-winded answers [that] are anything but an honest dialogue.”
Yet LaPierre is willing dialogue using “a mutually agreed-upon moderator…on any network that will take [the debate].” But there can be “no pre-screened questions and no gas-bag answers.”
LaPierre said, “Americans will judge for themselves who they trust and believe on this issue—you or the NRA. Let’s see if you’re game for a fair debate. It’s your chance to show the American people you’re not afraid to meet the NRA on neutral ground.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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