LaPierre Challenges Kerry To Debate Gun Rights Issue

The New GUN WEEK, October 10, 2004
Page 2

LaPierre Challenges Kerry To Debate Gun Rights Issue

by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

As the 2004 Presidential campaign moves into its final
weeks, the issue of gun rights and where candidate John
Kerry stands on the issue has been heating up despite the
Kerry campaign?s strong effort to convince voters that the
Massachusetts Democrat is not a threat to their gun rights.

But Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the
National Rifle Association (NRA), is having none of it. He
has issued a challenge to Kerry to debate his ?anti-gun
record.?

?I challenge John Kerry to debate me any time, anywhere on
the gun issue,? LaPierre stated. ?He cannot defend his
20-year anti-gun record.?

LaPierre accused Kerry of supporting virtually every
anti-gun piece of legislation during his 20-year career on
Capitol Hill. Over the past several months, however, Sen.
Kerry has tried to position himself as a gun rights
supporter who also believes in ?sensible? laws to keep guns
out of the wrong hands. He has been photographed on a
pheasant hunt in Iowa last fall, and earlier this year, he
traveled to Wisconsin and shot skeet at a gun club. More
recently, he was given a Remington shotgun during a Labor
Day rally, and he told Outdoor Life that his ?favorite? gun
is a ?Communist Chinese assault rifle? that apparently is
neither according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation
9NSSF) and The New York Times. It has been tentatively
identified as a bolt-action Mosin-Nagant.

The NRA leader stuck by his contention that the Remington
shotgun Kerry received in West Virginia would have been
banned under legislation sponsored by New Jersey anti-gun
Sen. Frank Lautenberg and supported by Kerry. He also
accused Kerry of being dishonest about his support for the
Second Amendment.

?I think John Kerry is a Second Amendment phony,? LaPierre
stated. ?He wants to fog this issue over to hide the fact
that he?s the most anti-gun presidential candidate in the
history of the United States, based on his 20-year anti-gun
voting record.?

LaPierre repeatedly alluded to gun control schemes that
have been pushed in Australia, and he said the Lautenberg
bill, supported by Kerry, ?is an Australian-style gun ban
that John Kerry wants to bring to America.? He said it is
?bad politics? to be anti-gun during an election year. He
asserted that this is ?why Kerry is trying to fog his
20-year anti-gun record.?

?Elitists like Kerry keep thinking the American public won?t
see through the fog and time after time the American public
teaches anti-gunners like John Kerry a lesson on Election
Day and I predict that it will happen again on Election Day
in November.?