The pinnacle of the powerful US gun lobby railed against American media Thursday, saying it was biased and lying in regards to the heated debate on regulating weapons.
“One of America’s greatest threats is the national news media that fails to offer a degree playing field for the reality,” NRA executive vice chairman Wayne LaPierre told an annual conference of conservatives just outside Washington.
Congress did not pass a hotly contested gun control law last year, despite a chain of latest mass shootings that shocked the nation.
The failure came after stiff opposition by the National Rifle Association and other gun groups, which mounted a successful counter-campaign and warned members that the united states government was bent on taking guns away.
“The political and media elite are lying to us,” LaPierre told the yearly Conservative Political Action Conference.
LaPierre, whose group counts about five million members, said the media “hate us, only for saying out loud and sticking up for what we believe, as though we had no right.”
“But their moral indignation, it may be directed right into their very own makeup mirrors,” he added.
His comments echoed criticisms often made by conservatives in regards to the mainstream media, which former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin once memorably dubbed the “lamestream media.”
LaPierre vowed that “NRA members won’t ever, and that i mean never, submit or surrender to the national media.”
Recalling that the correct to bear arms is enshrined within the Second Amendment of the usa Constitution, LaPierre declared that “standing with the NRA is a huge declaration of individual rights.”
And he promised a “bare-knuckle street fight” for this November’s mid-term elections.
US President Barack Obama, a Democrat, issued targeted executive orders and actions aiming to tighten rules for gun ownership and to assist states provide information regarding the mentally ill for federal background checks.
The rules were announced after the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting that left 20 babies and 6 staff dead in December 2012.
The massacre relaunched a push for gun control laws in America and a handful of states have since tightened gun rules.
But the national measures Obama sought, including a plan for enhanced background checks on gun buyers and a ban on assault-style rifles, failed in Congress.
“The NRA can not go quietly into the night. We shall fight. I promise you that,” LaPierre said.
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