Blaz: He’s an arms dealer
NATIONAL RIFLE Association head Wayne LaPierre blasted “opportunists” he said are trying to “exploit tragedy for political gain” during a highly politicized speech Thursday pushing back against calls for gun control.
LaPierre, without a whiff of irony, railed against “socialists” who “hate individual freedom” and blasted the media, the FBI and those behind sincere calls for gun-related legislation in the wake of last week’s tragedy that left 17 people dead at a Florida high school.
His rabble-rousing fell short at the Conservative Political Action Conference until he retreated to familiar targets, including Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo.
“What they want is more restrictions on the law-abiding,” he said. “They want to sweep right under the carpet the failure of school security.”
LaPierre — who earns more than $1 million a year and lives in exclusivity among lawmakers and lobbyists in Washington — painted gun control activists and the politicians who support them as out-of-touch.
“The elites don’t care not one wit about America’s school system. And schoolchildren,” he said. “Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedom so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.”
De Blasio fired back, calling LaPierre and his ilk “arms dealers masquerading as advocates.”
“You are one of the people responsible for this massacre and for all the massacres before,” he said of LaPierre during a City Hall press conference.
“It’s stunning to me that in the aftermath of the tragedy in Florida there’s not a hint of penitence in the leadership of the NRA. There’s not the slightest willingness to say that they have been wrong all these years and that they bear some responsibility for what happened,” the mayor added.
The NRA has faced intense criticism in the wake of the Feb. 14 massacre in Parkland, Fla., where a 19-year-old opened fire on his former classmates with an AR-15.
Students across the country are calling for stricter gun control laws and organizing a movement that has gained a national following.
Cuomo took the assault from the gun advocate in stride, boasting about New York’s strict firearm laws.
“If Wayne LaPierre is attacking you, you know you’re doing something right,” Cuomo said. “As a father and a gun owner, I think it would be nice if the NRA listened to the millions of children across this country who are asking the President and the GOP Congress to stop this senseless gun violence.