US gun lobby says ‘NO’ to gun control
US: The most powerful gun lobby in the United States stood
firm Monday against any additional restraints on firearms and ammunition
sales -- despite a national outcry in the wake of the Sandy Hook school
massacre.
Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle
Association (NRA), said Sunday that planned legislation to outlaw
military-style assault weapons and large-capacity magazines was “phony”
and would not work.
He repeated the NRA’s call to place an armed guard in every school
and argued that prosecuting criminals and fixing the mental health
system, rather than gun control, were the solutions to America’s mass
shooting epidemic. On December 14, a disturbed local man, 20-year-old
Adam Lanza, killed his mother in their Newtown, Connecticut home before
embarking on a horrific shooting spree at a local elementary school.
He blasted his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot dead 20
six- and seven-year old children and six adults with a military-style
assault rifle before taking his own life with a handgun as police closed
in.
The bloodshed, the latest in a string of mass shootings in the United
States, has reopened a national debate on the country’s gun laws, which
are far more lax than in most other developed nations.
President Barack Obama said he would support a new bill to ban
assault rifles and put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of a panel
looking at a wide range of other measures, from school security to
mental health.
AFP
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