Indoor Fireworks On Guns
No punches were pulled
in one gun control debate on Mother's Day.
With the Million Mom March for more gun control as the backdrop, both sides of the issue clashed in a heated exchange on CBS News' Face The Nation.
Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said education is the only way to reduce gun violence - and not the March's goal of licensing and registering handguns.
"The fact is licensing and registration doesn't stop criminals from driving cars. And what makes young children safe is teaching them to look both way before they cross the street."
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) argued education alone is not enough - and blamed the NRA for opposing the gun control bill that's stalled on Capitol Hill.
"The American public want us to resolve this. We lost 20,000 people in this country since that bill passed the Senate. We lost more than 300,000 in 11 years here, and we need to get together on this. This ought not to divide the nation."
LaPierre said the NRA supports a lot of what's in that legislation: gun safety locks, checks at gun shows with a 24-hour waiting period and prohibiting violent juveniles from owning guns.
But where the gun owners group has a problem, said LaPierre, is that congressional Democrats also want "the unlimited ability of the federal government to impose fees on law-abiding people, unlimited authority to issue new regulations on the gun owners, (and) a definition of gun shows so intrusive it could be the living room of your house."
"You're playing politics with us," LaPierre accused Dodd and his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill.
"You always seem to find a reason why you're against it," replied Dodd, referring to the NRA's persistent opposition of new gun regulations.
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LaPierre reiterated the NRA's recent refrain that existing gun laws need to be fully enforced before new laws are passed.
"Registration and licensing is nothing but a controlled burn of the econd Amendment. That's not the answer. I mean, you don't want to set aside or set on fire our freedoms. What you want to do is enforce the laws against the bad guys we already have."
Dodd said the laws on the books are being enforced better than the NRA contends.
"The prosecutions are up. We need to do a better job on that. This is not a debate whether we need to prosecute under existing laws and not do anything new. We happen to agree we ought to do a better job in prosecution, but we also believe we ought to try and prevent these crimes from happening in the first place."
And LaPierre stood by his comments from earlier this year in which he claimed President Clinton was exploiting gun violence tragedies for his own political ends.
"I wish I had said it five years ago," said LaPierre.
Dodd said LaPierre's comments then speak volumes now about the NRA's criticism of the Million Mom March.
"When you have the NRA as an organization calling the police 'jack-booted thugs,' suggesting the President of the United States somehow wants to see more killing so it will increase the political advantage for him and then attacking mothers because they're marching today in Washington and 70 other cities, then the credibility of their argument that somehow they're only interested in trying to teach children how to avoid guns just doesn't hold water," said the senator.