President Obama takes aim at NRA “fiction” in town hall meeting on guns
FAIRFAX, Va. — President Barack Obama tore into the National Rifle Association on Thursday as he sought support for his actions on gun control, accusing the powerful lobby group of peddling an “imaginary fiction” that he said has distorted the national debate about gun violence.
In a prime-time, televised town hall meeting, Obama dismissed what he called a “conspiracy” alleging that the federal government — and Obama in particular — wants to seize all firearms as a precursor to imposing martial law. He blamed that notion on the NRA and like-minded groups that convince its members that “somebody’s going to come grab your guns.”
“Yes, that is a conspiracy,” Obama said. “I’m only going to be here for another year. When would I have started on this enterprise?”
Obama defended his support for the constitutional right to gun ownership while arguing it was consistent with his efforts to curb violence and mass shootings. He said the NRA refused to acknowledge the government’s responsibility to make legal products safer, citing seat belts and child-proof medicine bottles as examples.
“If you listen to the rhetoric, it is so over the top, and so overheated,” Obama said, describing it as a ploy to drive up gun sales.
Taking the stage at George Mason University, Obama said he has always been willing to meet with the NRA— if they’re willing to address the facts. He said the NRA was invited to the town hall but declined to participate.
Part of a concerted White House push to promote the executive orders on guns the president unveiled this week, the town hall attracted a number of high-profile figures in the gun debate, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in 2011.
Obama took questions from Taya Kyle, whose late husband was depicted in the film “American Sniper,” and Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, whose daughter Hadiya was shot and killed near Obama’s Chicago home.
She thanked the president for “making it more difficult for guns to get in the hands of those that shouldn’t have them. Thank you for the action you took on Tuesday.”
“But I want to ask a question. How can we stop the trafficking of guns from states with looser gun laws into states with tougher gun laws? Because I believe that’s the case, you know, often in Chicago, and possibly the source of the gun that shot and murdered my daughter,” Pendleton said, according to a CNN transcript.
Obama responded: “If we are able to set up a strong background check system — and my proposal, by the way, includes hiring — having the FBI hire a couple hundred more people to help process background checks . . . or 200 more ATF agents to be able to go after unscrupulous gun dealers, then that will apply across the country.
“Now, we can’t guarantee that criminals are not going to have ways of getting guns. But, for example, it may be a little more difficult and a little more expensive,” he said.
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina on Chicago’s South Side, also posed a question to the president, asking why guns can’t carry titles like automobiles.
“I don’t understand why we can’t title guns just like cars. If I have a car and I give it to you, Mr. President, and I don’t transfer a title, and you’re in an accident, it’s on me. We don’t take cars away by putting titles on them. Why can’t we do that with guns?”
Obama praised the activist priest for his “heroic work at St. Sabina Parish” in Chicago, but said there was no “national consensus” for licensing or registration of guns, in part because of “people’s concern that that becomes a prelude to taking people’s guns away.”
Josh Lederman reported from Washington. AP’s Kathleen Hennessey and Sun-Times staff contributed to this report.