LaPierre To Bloomberg: Drop Dead

NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre.Ron Sachs/DPA/ZUMAPress

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, on Sunday delivered this message to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg: Spend all the money you want; it won’t make a whit of difference.

A day after news broke that Bloomberg would spend $12 million on an ad blitz pressuring Congress to expand gun background checks , LaPierre lashed out on NBC’s “Meet the Press”

He’s going to find out that this is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, and he can’t spend enough to try to impose his will on the American public. They don’t want him in their restaurants, they don’t want him in their homes, they don’t want him telling them what food to eat. They sure don’t want him telling them what self-defense firearms to own. And he can’t buy America. He’s so reckless in terms of his comments on this whole gun issue.

LaPierre claimed that Bloomberg’s ramped-up involvement in the debate over gun control had prompted a backlash: “Millions of people,” many of them presumably NRA members, were mailing in $5, $10, and $20 checks “telling us to stand up to this guy that says that we can only have three bullets, which is what he said. Stand up to this guy that says ridiculous things like, ‘The NRA wants firearms with nukes on them.'” He went on, “I mean it’s insane the stuff he says.”

As he often does, LaPierre argued on “Meet the Press” that America’s gun violence problem resulted from poor enforcement of existing laws, not a lack of regulation. He said the NRA supported “better enforcement” of federal gun laws, and that the failure to enforce gun laws was the Obama administration’s fault: “I know they don’t want to do it, but they ought to do it. It’s their responsibility.” LaPierre declined to mention that, for decades, the NRA and other gun-rights advocates have done everything they can to gut the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the agency that enforces federal gun laws. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate