National Rifle Association President David Keene said the gun lobby will not compromise on an assault-weapons or a high-capacity-magazine ban because neither will stop massacres like the one that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
“We’re not willing to compromise on people’s rights when there is no evidence that doing so is going to accomplish the purpose,” Keene said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding the Obama administration is “not going to be able to get an assault-weapons ban through this Congress.”
He placed the burden on the mental-health community, saying the shooting at Virginia Tech, in 2007, would not have occurred if “mentally incompetent and potentially dangerous” Americans were prohibited from buying firearms.
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“Most of the people who engage in these sort of things are people who have had real trouble,” Keene said. “What we put the brakes on is anything that simply takes away a person’s Second Amendment right for no good reason.”
He said the “millions upon millions of Americans who value the rights that they have under the Second Amendment” are going to be hurt by the administration’s gun-control agenda. He also denied allegations, brought up by host Candy Crowley, that NRA is leading the public to believe the government is going to take away their guns in order to increase gun sales and, in turn, donations from gun manufacturers.
“The two people who are selling so-called assault rifles are Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein and President [Barack] Obama, not us,” Keene said. “They’re the ones that are scaring American gun owners. It isn’t the NRA.”
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