NRA Bypasses Media To Take Its Message to the Public
By Ben Anderson
CNS Staff Writer
20 January, 2000

(CNSNews.com) – Just hours after Washington, DC, mayor Anthony Williams joined the litigation movement against firearm manufacturers, National Rifle Association Executive Director Wayne LaPierre Jr. challenged Williams to join the call for more federal prosecutors to enforce existing federal gun laws.

Speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington on Thursday, LaPierre lashed out against the Clinton Administration’s record of prosecuting violators of federal gun laws.

“Out of 2,000 violent crimes commited in 1998, only two people went to jail under all federal gun laws,” LaPierre said.

“We challenge (Washington, DC, mayor Anthony Williams) to join us in walking the halls of Congress to ask for fifty federal prosecutors to enforce the existing federal gun laws here in Washington and send those criminals to federal prison. Not one out of a thousand, but a thousand out of a thousand.”

LaPierre said the Clinton Administration’s “miserable rate of prosecution” is a story ignored by the established media.

“The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms has been hatcheted, ambushed, ridiculed and betrayed by the media more than any other cause.”

The NRA, LaPierre said, is bypassing the established media by producing news stories on its own focusing on the global push to rid individuals of their firearms.

In Britain, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in a silent protest of the government’s drive to confiscate firearms, according to one of the NRA reports. Another suggests citizens of Australia and Canada, too, are facing the same anti-gun agenda administered by their governments.

“We’ve got journalists on the ground all over this planet telling the tragic story of lost freedoms,” LaPierre said.

Through its web site, the NRA is taking its messages directly to the public.

By doing so, LaPierre said “Never again can we be silenced, snubbed or muzzled. Never again can we be forced to the back of the free-speech bus.”