A top National Rifle Association official on Tuesday accused
President Barack Obama of seeking to redefine the rights of gun owners,
telling a hunting and wildlife conservation group that the president’s
use of the word “absolutism” in his inauguration speech was an attack on
law-abiding citizens who own firearms.
Obama said in his speech Monday that Americans shouldn’t “mistake
absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat
name-calling as reasoned debate.”
The remark was interpreted by the NRA as a reference to the organization’s steadfast opposition to any new gun regulations.
NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre told a Weatherby
Foundation awards ceremony that the Second Amendment gives Americans the
unfettered right to own a firearm, but the president wants to redefine
that freedom.
“Absolutes do exist, words do have specific meaning in language and in law,” he said.
The president wants Americans to believe that “putting the federal
government in the middle of every gun transaction” will make them safer,
LaPierre said. But the NRA believes people have the right to defend
themselves and their families with semi-automatic firearms technology,
he said.
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