Gun lobby helps block US from signing UN arms treaty

Senators passed an amendment to block the Obama administration from signing any future U.N. Arms Trade Treaty in a 53-to-46 vote early Saturday morning before dawn. The measure, introduced by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., was one of dozens passed as part of an all-night “vote-a-rama” that led to the first national economic budget passed by the Senate in four years.

The gun lobby-backed Inhofe amendment requires the executive branch “to uphold Second Amendment rights and prevent the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.”

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http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/25/gun-lobby-helps-block-us-from-signing-un-arms-treaty/

Why it’s so hard to keep guns out of abusive households

Richard D’Alauro is the National Rifle Association’s field representative in New York City and surrounding suburbs, and he kept dozens of different firearms of all kinds at his Long Island home. But in 2010, after he was charged in a domestic violence dispute, police confiscated more than 39 pistols, shotgun and rifles from his East Newport home.

His wife, Maribeth D’Alauro, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and walks with a cane, divorced him after the incident. She later told the New York Daily News he was a “bully” who had subjected her to “years of domestic violence.”

To finish reading the article, please click on the link below:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/20/why-its-so-hard-to-keep-guns-out-of-abusive-households/

Sequester trumps Sandy Hook: Why gun-control measures may falter

Many Americans expected a real change in the nation’s gun laws after the killing of 20 first-graders in Newtown. But three months later, the outcome looks unclear. No fewer than four pieces of legislation have passed a Senate panel over the past two weeks to move to the Senate floor. “It’s a step forward,” Debra DeShong Reed, spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told MSNBC.

At the same time, legislators in both the House and Senate have stuck provisions into spending bills that could undermine federal enforcement of both existing and proposed gun control efforts. “It’s gonna be a slog,” Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told MSNBC.

“The will is there,” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, told MSNBC. Sugarmann is a longtime gun control advocate who grew up in Newtown decades before this past December’s tragedy. “But the NRA is relentless,” he added. “They are out there in public. They are working behind the scenes, and that is what we are seeing right now.”

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[Correction: The story incorrectly refers to a pump-action, semi-automatic shotgun used in Aurora, Colorado. The weapon used was a pump action shotgun. As many readers pointed out in comments, a weapon could not be both. My apologies. FS]

Glenn Beck returns to the NRA as group strengthens ties with gun manufacturers

Any remaining doubt about where the gun lobby may be headed after the Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting seems over now. NRA leaders have endorsed America’s most profitable gunmaking CEO, whose best-selling product is the same AR-15 rifle used by Adam Lanza inside the Sandy Hook school, to join the NRA’s governing board.

At the same time, NRA leaders are reaching beyond even Republicans to embrace Glenn Beck, who is now a self-described anti-GOP-establishment conservative.

This year, George Kollitides II, the chief executive officer of Freedom Group, America’s largest and most profitable consortium of gun manufacturing companies, has been selected as a candidate for the NRA board.

“He was put on by the Nominating Committee,” said Richard Pearson, one of the members of the NRA’s 2013 Nominating Committee who is not an NRA director, in a brief telephone interview with MSNBC from his office at the Illinois State Rifle Association. “We looked at the qualifications, and he was there.”

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Senate witness on weapons ban funded by gun lobby

One witness, David Kopel, who testified on January 30, identified at the hearing as a law school adjunct professor, received more than $108,000 in grants from the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund in 2011. Another witness, David T. Hardy, testifying Wednesday as a private attorney in Tucson, Arizona, received $67,500 in grants from the same NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund in 2011. Another witness testifying Wednesday, Nicholas Johnson, a Fordham Law School professor, spoke a year ago at an NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund scholars’ seminar.

Read the complete article at the link below:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/27/senate-witness-on-weapons-ban-funded-by-gun-lobby/

Introducing the NRA kingmakers

The rites of spring rarely change. Every year, even before the season opens for wild turkey shooting, hunters begin sighting-in their shotguns in the field. And just like the beginning of the hunting season, every spring, members of the National Rifle Association will learn whom their leaders have quietly picked for reelection to the NRA’s governing board. Eligible NRA members will also receive their paper ballots in the mail.

The NRA board appoints a shadowy committee to handpick almost every candidate appearing on the ballot annually. The Nominating Committee members for this year’s NRA board elections include highly-connected Republican leaders, along with figures connected to the nation’s largest conservative lobbying group, gun manufacturers, and even the New York State Police, reporting and internal documents obtained by MSNBC show.

Read full article on MSNBC.com:

The gun at the heart of the assault weapons debate

National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre is set to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His testimony, released Tuesday, repeats the same tired ideas that he has already articulated and that much of the nation has already rejected, including putting armed guards or police in schools. And he makes a pragmatic-sounding case for avoiding action, saying we all need “to be honest about what works–and what doesn’t work.”

LaPierre also defends military-style semi-automatic weapons, which gun-control backers in Congress recently introduced legislation to ban. “Semi-automatic firearms have been around for over 100 years,” he tells lawmakers. “They are among the most popular guns made for hunting, target shooting and self-defense.”

Please go to the MSNBC.com link below to read the full piece.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/30/the-gun-at-the-heart-of-the-assault-weapons-debate/