Biden to meet with NRA to discuss gun safety

Jan 10, 9:44 AM EST -

WASHINGTON (AP) — Invit­ing in the oppo­si­tion, Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden will meet Thurs­day with the National Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, the pow­er­ful pro-gun orga­ni­za­tion that could obstruct White House efforts to pass stricter arms legislation.

Biden, who is lead­ing an administration-wide review of gun safety laws, also will meet Thurs­day with sportsmen’s and wildlife inter­est groups, as well as with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the enter­tain­ment indus­try. The meet­ings are part of a week of dis­cus­sions the vice pres­i­dent is hold­ing as he pre­pares to present Pres­i­dent Barack Obama with rec­om­men­da­tions for curb­ing gun violence.

The effort was spurred by last month’s hor­rific mass shoot­ing in New­town, Conn., where 20 chil­dren and six edu­ca­tors were killed when a gun­man stormed an ele­men­tary school. Obama has set a late Jan­u­ary dead­line for Biden’s proposals.

The NRA, the nation’s largest gun-rights group, has blocked gun-control efforts in the past and is oppos­ing any new ones. In the wake of the New­town shoot­ing, NRA exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Wayne LaPierre rejected efforts to tighten gun laws and instead rec­om­mended putting armed guards in all schools as a way to stop another school shooting.

White House offi­cials rec­og­nize it is unlikely the NRA will ever fully sup­port mea­sures Obama is push­ing, includ­ing an assault weapons ban and lim­its on high-capacity ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines. But the admin­is­tra­tion may need to soften the NRA’s oppo­si­tion if it hopes to rally sup­port from pro-gun law­mak­ers on Capi­tol Hill.

Ahead of the NRA meet­ing, Biden said he wanted to hear from “all par­ties, on what­ever side of this debate you fall.”

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest firearms seller, will also take part in meet­ings with the vice pres­i­dent Thursday.

In a nod to polit­i­cal real­i­ties that could imperil sweep­ing gun-control leg­is­la­tion, Biden said the admin­is­tra­tion is weigh­ing exec­u­tive action in addi­tion to rec­om­mend­ing leg­is­la­tion by Con­gress. (empha­sis ours — Sen­tinel)

Rec­om­men­da­tions to the Biden group include mak­ing gun-trafficking a felony, get­ting the Jus­tice Depart­ment to pros­e­cute peo­ple caught lying on gun background-check forms and order­ing fed­eral agen­cies to send data to the National Gun Back­ground Check Database.

The Brady Cam­paign to Pre­vent Gun Vio­lence says that some 40 per­cent of gun sales are made with­out back­ground checks, such as at gun shows and over the Internet.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Brady Cam­paign joined other vic­tims’ groups and gun safety orga­ni­za­tions for meet­ings with Biden on Wednes­day. The vice pres­i­dent said the steps the admin­is­tra­tion is con­sid­er­ing could “take thou­sands of peo­ple out of harm’s way” and improve the safety of mil­lions more.

“I want to make it clear that we are not going to get caught up in the notion that unless we can do every­thing, we’re going to do noth­ing,” Biden said. “It’s crit­i­cally impor­tant we act.”

The New­town shoot­ings pushed gun con­trol to the top of Obama’s domes­tic agenda for the first time dur­ing his pres­i­dency. He was largely silent on the hot-button polit­i­cal issue after the 2011 shoot­ings in Tuc­son, Ariz., that killed six peo­ple and wounded 12 oth­ers, includ­ing then-Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords, and the Col­orado movie the­ater killing of a dozen peo­ple and wound­ing of many more last July.

Biden, refer­ring to the New­town shoot­ings, said at the White House, “Every once in a while, there’s some­thing that awak­ens the con­science of the coun­try, and that tragic event did it in a way like noth­ing I’ve seen in my career.”

The pres­i­dent hopes to announce his administration’s next steps to tackle gun vio­lence shortly after he is sworn in for a sec­ond term and has pledged to push for new mea­sures in his State of the Union address.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 10 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.