Calling President Barack Obama's attempts to restrict gun rights by executive orders "ill-advised," the new president of the NRA tells Newsmax TV his side will continue winning despite efforts to ignore the separation of powers.
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James Porter took on Vice President Joe Biden, who said this week the Obama administration will continue pushing tougher gun laws and that those who vote against them will face political consequences.
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"It's just another useless gun law that will have no effect on crime and certainly have no effect on the safety of our kids in school," Porter said. The White House has admitted, he said, that the laws they are pushing wouldn't have stopped any of the recent gun violence that has spurred new calls for legislation.
Despite the National Rifle Association supporting the defeat of a stronger background check bill in April, Porter said his organization has always supported background checks.
"We want the records that should be on there, particularly the mental health records," he tells Newsmax. "They don’t want to address the issue to make the background checks actually meaningful, and we do."
Obama announced 23 executive actions in January that he said would improve gun safety. Biden says 21 of those have either been implemented or almost completed.
Porter says the executive orders aren't workable because they ignore separation of powers.
"That's why you have an executive division and a legislative division and a judicial," he said. "They haven’t been able to win these battles in the legislative arena or the judicial arena and now they're trying the executive fiat. It's ill-advised."
The NRA has been running an attack ad against Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, urging him to honor his commitment to the Second Amendment. Manchin responded with an ad of his own, saying he has been a lifetime NRA member, but added, "I don’t walk in lock step with the NRA's Washington leadership, this administration or any special interest group."
Porter tells Newsmax, "Sen. Manchin talks NRA and is pro-gun when he is home in West Virginia, but when he leaves West Virginia, he's speaking Bloomberg and anti-gun."
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's group Mayors Against Illegal Guns is doing nothing to make people safer, Porter said.
"The laws in New York City and New York state are confiscatory and onerous, and I would urge them to take care of their own problems," Porter said.
The states that have passed restrictive gun laws were already "rife with crime," Porter said. He suggested they enforce existing laws rather than try to push "meaningless" new ones.
Porter also doesn't see the Senate ratifying a U.N. treaty to restrict the international trade of firearms. The two-thirds majority needed for ratification is "just not going to happen," he said.
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The anti-gun forces tried to win the battle politically, Porter said, "and we beat them. So what did they do? They go to the states. They try to push their legislation there. We beat them. So now they're in the international arena at the U.N., and, with all due respect, we will beat them there as well."
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