NRA AWOL: "Attack" of the gunweenies. Wayne LaPierre dances around the Gunwalker scandal subject in public, averting his eyes and stilling his tongue.

Wayne LaPierre, confronted with the Gunwalker scandal, reacts poorly.

So, the radio show went well, I thought.

My fellow guest (to my surprise) was Jeff Knox, and together we did a good job, I thought. We differed on one thing, though.

Jeff, having shaken the NRA bush himself, concludes that the Lairds are indeed serious about pursuing Gunwalker. So, too, it seems is CCRKBA's John Snyder who is fulsome in his praise of Lamar Smith.

Whatever. I stand by my sources in my essay of yesterday. I still think that at some level the fix is in.

As one of my sources observed: "Right after we talked earlier one of the (NRA) players was in a debate on FOX about guns and ATF and never even mentioned Gunwalker."

How do you do that, exactly? Unless, of course, you're trying to avoid the subject. Here's the "player" at work:



Why would you leave your biggest weapon in the holster and unmentioned? Why does he sound so ineffectual and defensive? The Gunwalker scandal gives him the biggest weapon ever devised to discredit the entire scheme of federal firearms control and he doesn't use it? Why? Why doesn't he just say from the jump that "the President's proposals further empower the ATF and until we get to the bottom of what really happened with the Project Gunwalker scandal, any other discussions are pointless"?

Unless the fix is in.

Kabuki theater indeed.

The NRA Lairds of Fairfax know that other folks are watching, however. The New York Times reports here that "N.R.A. Declines to Meet With Obama on Gun Policy."

WASHINGTON — More than two months after the Tucson shootings, the administration is calling together both the gun lobby and gun safety groups to find common ground. But President Obama has no plans to take the lead in proposing further gun control legislation, aides say, and the nation’s major gun rights group is snubbing the invitation.

On Tuesday, officials at the Justice Department will meet with gun control advocates in the first of what will be a series of meetings over the next two weeks with people on different sides of the issue, including law enforcement, retailers and manufacturers, to seek agreement on possible legislative or administrative actions.

The effort follows Mr. Obama’s call, in a column on Sunday in a Tucson newspaper, to put aside “stale policy debates” and begin “a new discussion” on ways to better enforce and strengthen existing laws to keep mentally unstable, violent and criminal people from getting guns.

But the National Rifle Association, for decades the most formidable force against proposals to limit gun sales or ownership, is refusing to join the discussion — possibly dooming it from the start, given the lobby’s clout with both parties in Congress. Administration officials had indicated they expected that the group would be represented at a meeting, perhaps on Friday.

This tracks with the rumors floated before yesterday. The NRA, like SAAMI and NSSF, was going to participate in a new Munich Conference on firearms. But in this case Neville Chamberlain decided, apparently at the last minute, not to sit down to negotiate other people's surrender.

“Why should I or the N.R.A. go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?” said Wayne LaPierre, the longtime chief executive of the National Rifle Association.

He named Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has almost no role in gun-related policies, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

Here again, in smarmy NYT-speak, is one of the effects of ignoring the Gunwalker scandal, for Hillary sure as hell was hip-deep in foreign policy aspects of that monstrous policy. But how can she be indicted without mentioning that little fact?

Why should he go? Wayne asks. I'll tell you why. To take the fight to the enemy on his own ground, to rhetorically "slap his jaws and force him to resent it" in the words of Nathan Bedford Forrest, to rock him back on his narrow-assed manipulative heels.

Now if it were me (and the chances of me becoming a Laird of Fairfax are something approaching less than zero) I'd walk boldly into meeting, and blow it up at the first sentence I got to speak with the declaration above: "Mr. President, your proposals further empower the ATF and until we get to the bottom of what really happened with the Project Gunwalker scandal, any other discussions are pointless." Then I would get up and walk out. And that would be the headline in the next day's newspapers.

But then that would be the act of a leader, not a compromised gunweenie. Even the NYT picks up on how unprincipled LaPierre's stand is:

“It shouldn’t be a dialogue about guns; it really should be a dialogue about dangerous people,” Mr. LaPierre said, adding that his group has supported proposals to prevent gun sales to the mentally ill, strengthen a national system of background checks and spur states to provide needed data.

Despite his opposition to joining the administration’s table, by his comments in an interview Mr. LaPierre sounded at times like the White House.

Indeed he did and indeed he does.

GOA's Larry Pratt, in contrast, brings up Gunwalker every chance he gets. Remember his contentious bout with Megyn Kelly? Indeed. Let's see that footage again:



That's what an interview looks like with a real leader who is on message and unafraid.


Wayne LaPierre comes out of the closet: "Yes, I'm a gunweenie! Okay? I admit it! So, there!"

No wonder LaPierre hides from the Gunwalker scandal. He might actually have to DO something for all those bucks the NRA membership pays him to represent their interests. You almost have to wonder what pictures Obama and his minions have of LaPierre. Fun with farm animals? Or just Chris Cox?

I'll believe that LaPierre and the NRA are serious about the Gunwalker scandal when they insist that any future campaign dollars will only go to national legislators who demand hearings now.

Everything else is just kabuki theater for the credulous and gullible Fudds in the cheap seats.

Until then, it is just the same old NRA weeniemobile, shuttling around, avoiding the issue.