National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said Tuesday that "common-sense gun laws" include strengthening the national background checks system and armed security guards in schools — steps that American politicians have refused to take.
"The NRA has fought for 20 years to put the records of those adjudicated mentally incompetent into the National Instant Check System," LaPierre said in a video on the organization's website. "And until the politicians demand that they are submitted, killers who are legally prohibited from owning firearms will walk into gun stores and pass every background check they take."
LaPierre's statement came after President Barack
Obama announced executive actions that would regulate gun sales and curb illicit purchases, bypassing opposition from Congress.
The NRA executive slammed the news media for not reporting that "38 states submit less than 80 percent of their felony convictions to the system, leaving more than 7 million felony convictions in the dark.
"They don't tell you the truth," LaPierre said. "Instead, the only thing the average American has heard about background checks is the absolute fallacy that what we need is more.
"The system is only as good as the records within it — and the records only get submitted if the politicians demand it."
He noted that those perpetrating some of the nation's biggest mass shootings in recent years — including the Oregon community college attacks in October — "passed a background check.
"If you cast a net and the fish swim through the holes, you don't need a bigger net. You need tighter holes.
"But when it comes to a background check system that's missing the names of millions of prohibited people, the politicians don't want to fix it," LaPierre said.
He detailed the history of the national system, which stemmed from legislation signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
The system "wouldn’t exist at all if it weren't for the NRA," LaPierre said, calling that "the best-kept secret."
"We demanded an honest system that was supposed to make sure good people can purchase firearms as quickly as possible. A system that catches violent felons, the adjudicated mentally incompetent and dangerous — and every other prohibited person right at the point of sale, where they would be prosecuted for a federal felony."
But since so many names are missing from the system, "what has happened instead is one of the greatest failures in the history of American leadership," LaPierre said.
Nearly 80,000 people who were legally prohibited from buying a gun "committed a felony" by trying to do so — but only 44 were prosecuted.
"Does that sound like a good number to anybody?" he asked.
"So when you hear politicians who won't fix the broken system talk about expanding it, don't buy it. Demand what works. Put armed security in every school. Fix the broken mental-health system. Enforce the federal gun laws against every criminal thug on the street.
"Prosecute dangerous people when they show up to buy a gun," LaPierre added. "And for God's sake, put every prohibited person into the system."
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