Archive [June 2000]

Just after the Hundred Thousand Million Mom March, I was privileged to speak with the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association — the perennial target of liberal Democrats, but especially this election season.

Rush: Hey, Wayne! Great to be with you. Thanks for your time here.

LaPierre: Same here. By the way, our folks all over the country have been talking about you going right at Clinton and Gore on this issue over the last seven or eight weeks.

Rush: Actually Wayne, you’re providing the leadership. You know, my wife said to me the other day, “Poor Wayne LaPierre. He’s got one message: enforcement, enforcement, enforcement — and nobody’s hearing it.” At least, none of the media’s hearing it, and none of Washington’s hearing it. Is it frustrating to you, having to continually say the same thing over and over again? Or is it that people are hearing it, and your membership is just growing and we’re not learning about it?

LaPierre: I think they are hearing it. Look at the polling data right now across the country. Virtually every poll, whether it’s Zogby or ABC or Gallup, shows that the American public prefers enforcement of the gun laws on the books, as opposed to more gun laws. That’s every poll.

So I think they are hearing it. In every poll they are also overwhelmingly, against these nuisance suits and harassment suits against the firearms manufacturers. The NRA’s approval rating in the polling data has never been better. We keep pounding home our three key points: If the issue’s stopping gun crime on the streets, the answer is enforcement and prosecution: if the issue is child accidents, the answer is education; and if the issue is violence in the schools, the answer is parenting and mentoring.

Rush: Absolutely.

LaPierre: That’s what we’re saying, and that’s what the polling data reflects.

Rush: Let’s talk about the polling data. It shows that Al Gore is losing across the demographic spectrum. There was even a Washington Times story on May 17 showing that Gore is losing on the gun control issue. You’ve got to take solace or comfort in that poll.

LaPierre: When people look at Al Gore, they see the type of politician they’re sick of. The hypocrisy’s hip deep in Gore’s stance on the gun issue. He’s got an ad out there saying that when he got into public life he was dismayed because he saw his father defeated by the gun lobby, and he was determined to make a difference. But the fact is, for the next 16 or 17 years, he voted with the NRA on every single vote he cast as Senator tor Tennessee. He voted to open up gun shows to private sales. He voted against registration. He voted against licensing. He voted for the Second Amendment as an individual right.

Rush: That must have been before he sought a national political career.

LaPierre: Yes. Then he did a 180-degree switch. I’ve joked that the conversion was so spectacular, it’s worthy of investigation by the church. No, the insincerity is so deep, I just don’t think people believe the guy. Now they’re trying to make an issue of the possibility that the NRA might have some access — to have its opinion considered by George Bush if he’s elected. I’d like to see the logs on how many times Handgun Control and the gun banners have passed through White House security with their briefcases in the last seven years.

Rush: Well, look at the whole organizational group plus a thousand extras that showed up on the White House lawn for the One Hundred Thousand Million Mom March. What the heck is that, if it’s not political?

LaPierre: That’s right. Yes, they were doing their press conference from the White House. But I think the public is seeing right through it. The loophole that Al Gore complains about in terms of gun sales at gun shows he voted to open up in the McClute Volkmer Bill, also known as the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act.

Rush: When was that?

LaPierre: In 1986. And yet he stands there and says, “This is the best day of my life” when he casts that tie-breaking gun control vote in the Senate last year. I mean, it’s hypocrisy. It’s insincere. Were going to be releasing a file on Al Gore, maybe a letter or two a day, starting about August. We’re going to release everything we have. And I think the public’s going to laugh.

Rush: Are you going to limit it to his hypocrisy on guns, or are you going to include, say, his tobacco hypocrisy?

LaPierre: I’m going to stick with guns. Because that’s the light we’re in.

Rush: You’ve got enough to release stuff every other day?

LaPierre: We have a lot. We have letters asking tor NRA support.

Rush: Wow!

LaPierre: We’ve got letters asking for contributions. We’ve got endorsement letters. I just want to show the hypocrisy to the American public.

Rush: Well, you know, you really fired people up. I have to tell you, you fired me up. We played your audio sound bite I don’t know how many times. People were fired up because you had the guts to say what they wish the Republicans they elected in Congress would say — “I’ve come to believe Clinton needs a certain level of violence in this country. He’s willing to accept a certain level of killing to further his political agenda.” Clinton’s out there saying that you claimed he likes killing and promotes it, but that’s not what you said. You said he’s tolerant of a certain amount of violence. You haven’t taken that back at all, have you?

LaPierre: And I never intend to. I wish I’d said it five years earlier. The truth is, Bill Clinton’s the one person, along with Al Gore, who could walk down the hall to the Justice Department and change their shameful policy on not enforcing the existing gun laws on the books against violent felons with guns, drug dealers with guns, and violent gangs with guns. Every police officer in the country knows that if they catch one of those guys violating existing federal law, they call Janet Reno’s Department of Justice and say, “Prosecute?” she says, “No, no thanks,” every time. She leaves them out on the street, and eventually they kill somebody. The violent felon robs somebody. The drug dealer shoots somebody in a shootout. The violent gang member does a drive-by shooting or a gang-bang shooting, and somebody gets killed. All they have to do is enforce the existing law to save lives.

Rush: Yes.

LaPierre: In Richmond, Virginia, where not one new law was enacted, where we simply 100 percent of the time started enforcing the existing federal gun laws against violent felons and drug dealers and violent gangs, we cut murder with guns by 65 percent.

Rush: Who is the police chief down there?

LaPierre: Jerry A. Oliver. David Schiller, Assistant United States Attorney and chief federal prosecutor for Project Exile, the guy who invented the program, has been kept away from the media. Dave Schiller, the Elliot Ness Truth and Justice Prosecutor, has been steered by the Clinton Administration away from talking to the media. They have him working on health care issues now.

Rush: I’m not surprised. Let me ask you a question — and I know what your answer’s going to be — but I want you on record saying this.

LaPierre: All right.

Rush: The question is, how long are you prepared to go with this? Because I firmly believe that the left in this country really does not look at their objectives with time limits on them as we do. We’ve got a four-year administration; we’ve got to get it all done in four years, or we give it up and wait. These people are going to keep going until they get what they want done.

There’s only one way, Wayne, to get rid of the Second Amendment. They cannot confiscate guns until they have a Constitutional Amendment that abolishes the Second Amendment. And they’re going to do that if it takes them 10 to 15 years. Are you guys prepared to fight them that long?

LaPierre: Oh, absolutely. We’re in this for the long haul. I tell folks every day: We’re no different than our Founding Fathers 200 years ago, who stood up for those freedoms, took on the mightiest army in the world in their time, and fired those “shots heard round the world” at Concord Bridge. I tell our folks, look, our freedoms are written on a piece of paper, They’re on a piece of parchment paper — unless we stand up for them every day. We’re going to fight; we’re going to defend this freedom. And we’re going to win. Because the American public knows that, if they don’t stand up for their freedom, they’re simply going to have less of it.

Rush: What makes you think the American people know this? There are several conservatives — and I must say I’m one of them — who sometimes wonder just what the American people know. I mean, we federalize crime that was intended to be a state issue. We federalize so many things. The American people sit around and say, “That’s good! I want to be safe and secure.” The separation of powers is being obliterated by this Administration. And I sometimes wonder if the American people have a basic Constitutional education sufficient enough to understand the bastardizations that are going on. What gives you confidence that people are going to stop, realize, and oppose this?

LaPierre: I do agree with you on one thing. Unlike folks who escaped Cuba, who escaped totalitarian governments and dictatorship, who have a taste for what freedom is about as a result of not having it, the American public has become apathetic about their freedoms. But I also think that if you stick it right in their face, and make it real obvious that they’re going to lose it, they’ll wake up. What’s happening on the gun issue right now is that the agenda from the other side is out of the closet. This isn’t about safety locks. This isn’t about checks in gun shows. This isn’t about Juvenile Brady. What this is about is registering every American firearm owner with the federal government; licensing every American gun owner with the federal government; making them pass federal tests before they can own a gun. And the only purpose for doing that, once the government has the list, is the knock on the door to confiscate the firearms and take away freedom from Americans. We’ve watched it happen in England. We’ve watched it happen in Australia. It’s happening in Canada. But I don’t think citizens here are going to let it happen in the good old USA.

Rush: I had a phone call from a woman in Florida who said that she wished she could have gone to the Hundred Thousand Million Mom March, because she supports “sensible” gun legislation. And I said “Madam, 20,000 laws or more on the books were violated at Columbine and it still happened. What is one more law going to do?” She said, “It’s going to make me feel better.”

LaPierre: If she would join us against what the Clinton/Gore Administration is doing, and get some of these existing laws enforced, she wouldn’t feel better — she’d be safe! The people who are doing the killing are the drug dealers with guns, the violent gangs with guns, and the violent felons with guns. That’s who a suburban woman has to fear. It’s not her neighbor.

Rush: Which leads me to another thing. We hear this magical number “13 children killed every day.”

LaPierre: Yes.

Rush: But we don’t hear that only two percent of them are under three; the vast majority are 17 to 19 in gangs. Is that a correct statistic?

LaPierre: Yes. In fact, we have accidental deaths among children down to the lowest level ever in U.S. history, thanks to our Eddie Eagle Child Safety Program. The 13-a-day figure are not children at all. They’re 15-, 16-, 17-, 18- and 19-year-old violent juveniles. Everything they’re doing with a gun is already illegal under the existing gun laws. And they’re exactly the kinds of people President Clinton and Al Gore will not enforce the law against and take off the street. In fact, in the last two years, they only have eleven prosecutions against violent juveniles with guns. Eleven. In the entire United States, only eleven prosecutions of illegally transferring guns to violent juveniles.

Rush: I have a theory about why the Administration is not enforcing gun laws, and not encouraging the states to do it. I’d be interested in hearing your theory.

LaPierre: I think it’s a combination of two or three things. We held hearings in the Senate before Senator Sessions’ Committee, and the Administration admitted that it’s deliberate policy. They have an OMB memo dating back to ‘94, when they decided they would de-emphasize prosecutions — on the crazy theory that if you take one felon off the street, he’ll always be replaced by another felon. So they’re going to concentrate instead on guns at the source. Whatever that means.

Rush: That’s a crime.

LaPierre: It’s a deliberate, intentional policy. I also think they know that if they enforce the laws on the books, and dramatically cut crime, it takes all the wind out of their gun-ban agenda.

Rush: That’s it! If they let these laws go unenforced, people say, “These laws aren’t working! They’re not working!” So they demand more laws. And after demanding more and more laws that don’t work, what’s the obvious conclusion? “I guess we’re going to have to take your guns away!”

LaPierre: Which is what to defend they’re really after. The end zone for the Clinton/Gore folks is a complete gun ban in the United States. That became very apparent watching those radical organizers of the so-called “Million Mom Match.” The end zone is firearms prohibition against the honest people. Yet if you do that, the criminals will still get as many guns as they want. They can still do it England. They can still do it in Australia. You go into a back alley in England right now with cold cash in your hand, and in 20 minutes, you’ll have a firearm.

Rush: Anti-gun people say it’s the number of guns that’s putting us all at risk. But you go to a gun show where there are more guns in one place than anywhere else, and there aren’t any crimes.

LaPierre: That’s true. And the places with many of the fewest gun laws have the lowest crime rate. Vermont has very few gun laws, and a very low crime rate. And a very high ownership rate. Washington D.C. has complete prohibition, and it’s one of the murder capitals of the United States. They had 290 murders last year; 1800 armed robberies. And under all the existing federal gun laws, according to Syracuse University, they only took two people off the streets.

Go city by city, according to Syracuse: it’s 14 in the entire state of New Jersey. It’s 20 in Atlanta, Georgia. Eight in San Francisco. Nine in San Diego. And 24 in Los Angeles. The level of enforcement is shocking. No administration that cares about safety could possibly deliver such a dismal level of enforcement against the people doing the killing.

Rush: Speaking of administrations, the NRA’s second-ranking officer caused a bit of a flap when he said, “We will have a president where we can work out of their office,” if George Bush is elected. Of course the anti-gun crowd has gone berserk with that, running ads. Are they getting any traction?

LaPierre: I don’t know. What I’ve said is that the idea of Al Gore and the gun-banners trying to make an issue of White House access is laughable. Again, the gun ban folks have practically lived at the White House for the last eight years. I’d love to see the logs on it — along with Chinese arms dealers and Communist Party officials. They even rented out the Lincoln Bedroom. And now they want to make an issue of the possibility that 3.6 million law-abiding people might have access to have our opinion considered! I’m sure that sometimes George Bush would take it, and sometimes he wouldn’t. That’s the way it works. I just shake my head and laugh at the whole thing.

Rush: Do you support concealed carry laws?

LaPierre: We do. They’re working. Thirty-some states now have them. In the states that have adopted them, crime goes down. The Department of Justice does these armed-victimization surveys all the time of criminals in jail. Every survey shows that criminals try to avoid a household where the homeowner may be armed. They try to avoid a potentially armed victim. This is a thinking process with criminals. They use common sense, and they try to avoid armed victims.

I remember when I was debating one of the gun-ban people on “Good Morning America,” and I pointed out that the sheriff who taught women how to use firearms had dropped the rate of rape in his county. And the woman from the gun ban movement I was debating said, “Well, of course — who’s going to try to rape a woman that you think is armed?” Charlie Gibson broke out laughing, and said: “She may have just made your point, Wayne.”

Rush: Does anything the opposition tries surprise you? For example, Tom Daschle trying to force a vote in the gun control issue recently which brought the Senate to a grinding halt. He said, “We will not do anything else. Maybe the silence will get the message through.” Are you pretty much prepared and up to speed for whatever’s going to come at you?

LaPierre: They don’t surprise me anymore. Because I expect shamefulness or stage theater out of the other side. We’re growing at the NRA. We’re going to be four million members by election day. We’re undergoing an explosion of growth like I don’t think the country has seen before in terms of an association. We’re certainly the fastest growing association in the United States. We’ve grown over a million members in the last 12 months. We’ve grown 200,000 members net increase in the last six weeks. We’ve had over $10 million come into our building in the last four weeks, in contributions. We’re going to put all of that into people walking precincts, knocking on doors, taking people to the polls.

Rush: How much does it frustrate you, that you have to do this? Do some of you say, “Wait a minute, this is a basic constitutional right. If our kids were being taught the Constitution properly, this wouldn’t even be an issue.” Doesn’t that frustrate you?

LaPierre: It does. Americans need to appreciate their freedoms, and it frustrates me that there are politicians always trying to make a name for themselves by chipping away at freedom. Certainly with the gun issue, if we let them get away with it, we’re not going to be safe here, we’re just going to lose more freedom. I think they’re terribly misguided and destructive, and it’s up to us not to let them get away with it.

But I’m also determined, and I’m proud of our association for being willing to stand up on principle, take a stand, and not let them succeed. It’s a fight we’re proud of. I think it’s a fight our Founding Fathers would be proud of us for fighting. We at the NRA really do view ourselves as the modern-day descendants of the Thomas Jeffersons and the George Washingtons.

Rush: Absolutely. Yours is Amendment Number Two. It isn’t number nine or ten.

LaPierre: That’s right. And as Charlton Heston said, we view it as the first freedom. Because, before any of these others existed, if those shots hadn’t been fired at Concord Bridge, the others wouldn’t exist today.

Rush: Wayne, you’ve got a lot of people on your side. They’re not activists, because they’re afraid of being called racists or bigots or sexists or extremists or whatever. But they silently pray for you. And I want you to know that you may never hear from them, they may never join, and they may not send you letters. But there are more people than you know encouraging you, applauding you, and supporting you when you say things like you said on ABC’s “This Week,” and when you fight for basic Constitutional rights. Don’t ever think you’re alone, and don’t ever think you’re a member of the minority. Because you’re not; you are part of the majority. One of our problems is, we are the majority, in terms of the House and Senate, and those people don’t act like it to create the impression that we think we’re in the majority. But you are, I think, carrying a banner that has the confidence and the presence of a majority point of view. And I hope you hold onto it.

LaPierre: Thanks, Rush. I really believe that you take any slice of American Pie, and you run into the NRA. And that’s what we’re about. We’re about America. We’re in big cities, and we’re in little cities; we’re in rural areas, and urban; we’re white-collar, and blue-collar; we’re every race in this country. I’m looking forward to November, and I’m confident we’re going to win.

Rush: Wayne, you’re going to win if you look at it that way. But your fight is never over. Our fight is never over. They’re never going to go away. They’re never going to admit defeat. This is my point about the Constitutional Convention 15 years from now. As long as you head up the NRA, or as long as you are a citizen carrying the views that you hold, you are going to be in a battle. We all are. It’s a never-ending battle with these people. There’s no victory. There is constant domination and prevalence — that’s all we can hope for. We’ve got to prevail. We’ve got to win each and every battle. But they’re never going to concede defeat.

LaPierre: It’s a proud fight. And so let’s fight it. We’re not in Washington to go to the cocktail parties, and to try to be popular on the cocktail circuit. We’re there to stand on principle, to fight for what we believe in, and to represent folks all over the country who haven’t lost sight of what this freedom is about.

Rush: Well, good. Don’t make the mistake the Republicans made in ‘94. They won, and thought the argument was over. Yours is never over. Ours is never over. You’ve got to keep pounding what you believe over and over again. Because the public education system is indoctrinating these kids to hate you, hate what you stand for, and to think the Constitution means something entirely different from what it says. That’s why I vowed that I’m never, ever going to leave this microphone till every American agrees with me. And, of course, that’s never going to happen, which means I’m never leaving.

LaPierre: Rush, I think you have an absolutely tremendous impact around the country.

Rush: Well, so do you.

LaPierre: We’re actually also going into the press business at the NRA.

Rush: What are you going to do?

LaPierre: Everyone knows our biggest problem is the biased media. So we’ve decided we’re going into the news business. We’re going to fight their news with our news — and our news is going to be the truth. We’re establishing a live newscast on the Internet. We’re going to do up to 30 minutes of live broadcasting each day. Our own newscast where people can tap into. We’re launching a brand new magazine here at our annual meeting, a hard news magazine called “First Freedom.” We are hiring journalists and media folks from around the country who agree on the issue, who are credentialed, to run the operation for us. We’re developing these “Dateline NBC”-type half-hour news shows. Given the renaissance in cable television and everything else, we’re going to be able to buy up to $30 million worth of media this year, and get every penny of it back in contributions and new memberships. So if people are in Wyoming or Maine or New York or Florida, they’ll be able to turn on their TV set and see a half-hour news program from the NRA, delivering direct news to the public, bypassing the filter of the national media. Basically we’re establishing our own news operation in the NRA. I think this is the cutting edge of communications where a lot of other folks need to go in the next couple of years.

Rush: I agree with you. All the best to you. We’re on your side. We’ll be chronicling your efforts. And you keep saying stuff like you said on ABC’s “This Week,” and we’re going to keep repeating it.

LaPierre: I appreciate it, Rush. And you keep doing your thing. I think the world of what you’re doing. And my mom listens to you every single day.