Wayne LaPierre was a hit at CPAC. The National Rifle Association’s executive vice president, who in the three months since the Sandy Hook massacre has fiercely opposed any form of gun control legislation, whipped the audience of conservative activists into a frenzy on Friday with a speech that took aim at Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester (or at least the prospect of releasing people from ICE detention centers).
But LaPierre saved the most firepower for President Obama’s proposal to expand background checks to include all private gun sales. The push to close the so-called “gun show loophole,” in LaPierre’s view, is nothing more than a “placebo” that would do nothing to stop gun violence. (Never mind that placebos are actually quite effective.) He alleged that improved record-keeping would leave the United States vulnerable to foreign countries like China and Mexico (video above):
It’s gonna be people like you and me. That’s who they’re tracking. That’s who they’re after. The names of good, decent people, all across this country, who happen to own a firearm, to go into a federal database with universal registration of every lawful gun-owner in America. That’s their answer to criminal violence? Criminalize 100 million law-abiding gun owners in a private transfer? Build a list of all the good people? As if that would somehow make us safe from violent criminals and homicidal maniacs? That’s their answer? Are they insane?
What’s the point of registering lawful gun-owners anyway—so newspapers can print those names and addresses for gangs and criminals to access? You know that’s happened before! So the list can be hacked by foreign enemies like the Chinese, who recently hacked Pentagon computers? So the list can be handed over to the Mexican government that, oh by the way, they’ve already requested that list from our government? In the end there are only two reasons for the government to create that list of registered gun owners: to tax them, or to take them.
We shouldn’t track firearms sales because if we do, Chinese hackers will find out where all the guns are, and then…what, exactly? Go door-to-door in Northern Idaho to confiscate them? LaPierre, as is his wont, didn’t get into specifics. The paranoia speaks for itself.
