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Hothead NRA chief Wayne LaPierre took a pot shot yesterday at Mayor Bloomberg’s big-money ad campaign to challenge pro-gun lawmakers throughout the country — saying his members will go dollar for dollar with the billionaire New Yorker.
LaPierre dismissed the mayor — one of the nation’s fiercest gun-control advocates — on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when he and Bloomberg appeared, separately, on the news show.
Bloomberg today is kicking off a $12 million TV ad campaign targeting federal lawmakers in 13 states to back a package of gun reforms that will go before the Senate next month, including universal background checks for all gun purchases.
“He can’t buy America,” LaPierre said after the mayor’s appearance on the show.
“He’s going to find out this is a country of the people, by the people and for the people — and he can’t spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public.”
Bloomberg wasn’t backing down yesterday. Hizzoner defended his effort to strengthen background checks even though the assault-weapons ban was dropped from the legislative package.
“We demanded a plan, and then we demanded a vote,” he said.
“We’ve got the plan. We’re going to get the vote.
“And now it’s incumbent on us to make our voices heard.
“There are an awful lot of people that think that this is one of the great issues of our time.
“We have to stop the carnage,” Bloomberg said. “I think we are going to win this.”
LaPierre, the face of the NRA since his over-the-top press conference after the Sandy Hook school shootings, insisted his members will use a grass-roots effort to fight the mayor’s big spending.
“We have people all over — millions of people sending us $5, $10, $15, $20 checks, saying, ‘Stand up to this guy that says we can only have three bullets,’ which is what he said. ‘Stand up to this guy that says ridiculous things like the NRA wants firearms with nukes on them.’ I mean, it’s insane the stuff he says,” LaPierre said.
Bloomberg has long bemoaned a system of background checks that consistently fails to red-flag criminals and the mentally ill.
But LaPierre said stricter checks would only provide a nuisance for legal gun owners and would not catch more dangerous ones.