Biden, NRA to meet on guns -- The Hill, Justin Sink & Daniel Strauss

[bsteadman]

Biden, NRA to meet on guns

The Hill
Justin Sink and Daniel Strauss
1/8/2013

Excerpt: - 01/08/13 01:20 PM ET

Vice President Biden will meet this week with the National Rifle Association and a variety of other groups as his task force on guns intensifies its efforts.

Biden will meet Wednesday with gun-safety organizations and shooting victims groups and on Thursday will meet with gun ownership organizations and sportsmen who use guns recreationally, according to the White House.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the organization accepted an invitation received from the White House late Friday.

"We are sending a rep to hear what they have to say," Arulanandam said.

Biden will also meet with members of the video game and entertainment industry, which have come under scrutiny in the debate over gun violence.

Biden is leading a task force charged with making recommendations to President Obama to prevent shooting massacres, and it increasingly looks like the task force is taking a broad look at how to limit gun violence.

The task force was assembled in response to the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which resulted in 27 dead, including 20 children. Obama has described the day as the worst of his presidency, and has said he will look to take quick action on the Biden group's recommendations.

The Washington Post recently reported that the White House is weighing a broad approach on gun control that would go beyond bans on assault weapons and high-capacity clips that have garnered attention in the past. The Post said the Biden group was considering universal background checks for gun buyers and a national database to track the movement and sale of weapons.

Members of Congress have suggested a willingness to look at the issue of gun violence, but any significant changes to gun laws would be expected to encounter resistance from Republicans and many Democrats.

The NRA opposes new restrictions on gun ownership, and has proposed that one way to deal with the issue of gun violence is to put armed guards in schools.

White House press secretary Jay Carney at his Tuesday press briefing said the vice president was overseeing a process engaged with a variety of stakeholders to look at gun violence.

"They include gun owners and groups that represent gun owners," he said.

Asked specifically what the vice president hoped to hear from the NRA, Carney stressed that the White House "doesn't want to prejudge any recommendations that any stakeholders would present."

Carney said that the meeting was "designed to get input" from stakeholders — a sign that the administration is hoping the gun group will present its own recommendations on preventing gun violence.

In addition to his meetings, Biden will hold conference calls with elected officials from across the country as part of his effort, the White House said.

Separately, Cabinet officials will hold meetings with organizations to discuss gun-violence prevention.
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[bsteadman]

Off With a Bang: Assault on Second Amendment Begins -- FrontPage Magazine

Off With a Bang: Assault on Second Amendment Begins

FrontPage Magazine
Matthew Vadum
1/8/2013

Excerpt:

President Obama is planning an aggressive, in-your-face, blitzkrieg-style campaign against Americans’ fundamental Second Amendment right to self-defense.

After a madman murdered 26 people including 20 young schoolchildren last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama initially urged a reinstatement of the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban. The demonstrably useless law lapsed in 2004 and had no detectable impact on crime. It was designed to cater to big-city liberals and their irrational fear of firearms.

But the Obama administration’s plans to assault the Bill of Rights grew more ambitious over the Christmas holidays. The administration has now had an opportunity to brainstorm more extensively with the left-wing gun-grabbing lobby, which is heavily financed by radical financier George Soros.

The president is hoping to use the bloody Newtown massacre to impose sweeping new restrictions on firearms and to create a massive new database to track and spy on law-abiding gun owners. Americans are wise to be wary of such proposals. Governments the world over have used such databases time and time again to crack down on internal dissent, lay the groundwork for gun confiscation, and clear the way for genocidal slaughter.

Citing multiple sources “involved in the administration’s discussions,” the Washington Post reports that the Obama White House is now “weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition.”

According to the newspaper:

A working group led by Vice President [Joe] Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors…

Vice President Biden “guaranteed” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino that President Obama would push through sweeping firearms restrictions before February.

“He said, ‘Tommy, I guarantee you, we’ll get it done by the end of January,’” Menino said, according to the Boston Herald. “They’re going to get it done.”

Obama may intend to bribe and blackmail businesses in order to win their support for his assault on law-abiding gun owners, the Post article suggests.

“[T]he White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses,” the article stated.

The Obama White House is coordinating its strategy with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken enemy of the Second Amendment. Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns with Boston’s Menino.

Biden’s working group is reportedly gearing up to present a package of recommendations to the president soon. After that the Community Organizer-in-Chief intends to head up a public-relations campaign to further inflame the public before the passions generated by the Newtown murders cool.

“They are very clearly committed to looking at this issue comprehensively,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which is participating in Biden’s group.

Despite ceaseless cheerleading by their allies in the mainstream media, leftists probably won’t be able to shoot holes in the Second Amendment easily.

Lawmakers from both parties are opposed to further crackdowns on the ownership of guns, which author David B. Kopel notes are already “the most severely regulated consumer product in the United States — the only product for which FBI permission is required for every single sale.”

Newly sworn-in Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said gun control proposals now being discussed –including a plan by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to create a national gun registry– are unconstitutional. The federal government doesn’t have “any business having a list of law-abiding citizens” who choose to exercise their right to keep and bear arms, he said.

After Newtown “within minutes, we saw politicians run out and try to exploit this tragedy, try to push their political agenda of gun control,” Cruz told “Fox News Sunday.”

What happened in Newtown is “a tragedy, but it’s not a tragedy that should be answered by restricting the constitutional rights of all Americans.”

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) also cautioned against taking aim at gun owners’ rights.

“I think you need to put everything on the table, but what I hear from the administration — and if the Washington Post is to be believed — that’s way, way in extreme of what I think is necessary or even should be talked about. And it’s not going to pass,” the new freshman senator said on a Sunday TV talk show.

Heitkamp said mental health-related proposals have to be part of any package aimed at reducing violent crime.

“Let’s start addressing the problem. And to me, one of the issues that I think comes — screams out of this is the issue of mental health and the care for the mentally ill in our country, especially the dangerously mentally ill. And so we need to have a broad discussion before we start talking about gun control,” she said.
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