NRA Predicts Assault Weapons Ban Won’t Pass Congress
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — No matter what kind of recommendations Vice President Joe Biden’s group makes to the president to curb gun violence, National Rifle Association President David Keene says a possible renewal of the assault weapons ban won’t get through Congress.
Interviewed on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Keene said the latest push by gun control advocates to reinstate a law against assault rifles and high-volume magazines, like the ones found on the Newtown, Conn., shooter, is doomed to fail on Capitol Hill.
The NRA made its own recommendation a week after 20 children and six adults died at the hands of a lone gunman, proposing armed guards and cops at every school in the nation.
Keene said limiting the availability of high-powered arsenals won’t reduce gun deaths, telling State of the Union it would be far better to treat the mentally ill and restrict their access to weapons.
The Biden group could give President Obama a long series of recommendations, including universal background checks. But the vice president has already indicated it will go far beyond the few steps the NRA proposed.
As for the talks Biden held with NRA officials last week, Keene dismissed them as nothing more than lip service, contending the White House already knows what it has in mind to curb gun sales, which the group likens to gutting Second Amendment rights.
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