PA Bill Number: HB1472

Title: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contributions ...

Description: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contrib ...

Last Action: Referred to STATE GOVERNMENT

Last Action Date: Apr 22, 2024

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Amnesty danger to gun rights conspicuously absent from LaPierre CPAC speech :: 03/02/2015

In his speech Friday before the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre discussed a host of issues impacting gun rights, declaring they all depend on each other. Curiously absent from his speech was any acknowledgment of the danger amnesty for illegal aliens with a “pathway to citizenship” would pose to continued government recognition of the right to keep and bear arms.

NRA's LaPierre warned against all kinds of threats to the right to keep and bear arms except the biggest one, which he evidently refuses to address.

That’s because credible polling confirms it would add a massive influx of new Democrat and “gun control”- sympathizing voters to the rolls. And that tracks with warnings issued by Gun Owners of America, curiously alone among national gun rights advocacy groups in sounding an alarm.

GOA has warned that the “pathway” will provide for millions of new anti-gun voters with the electoral clout to undo all hard-won legislative and judicial gains gun owners have enjoyed in recent years. That the administration is working toward that goal is corroborated by what Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, the official behind so-called "executive amnesty," told the United Conference of Mayors, when he maintained that “the approximately 11 million people who are in the country illegally have ‘earned the right to be citizens.’”

Despite knowing this, and knowing that that one of the supposed “pro-gun Democrats” who betrayed NRA and gun owner support has openly proclaimed immigration “will decide who is in charge of this country for the next 20 or 30 years,” the NRA head talked about all kinds of other issues but didn't breathe a word about amnesty.

LaPierre talked about threats from Russia and the Islamic State. He talked about the economy and the debt. He talked about pressures not to speak out and the loss of privacy to “Big Brother.” He talked about freedom of speech and freedom of religion. He talked about hackers and identity thieves. He talked about tracking license plates, online health histories, economic fraud, Brian Williams and the untrustworthy media. He talked about a “weaponized IRS” and “politicians ... pushing nanny state social schemes.”

The closest LaPierre came to taking on illegal immigration was a reference to “terrorists crossing our borders or embedded within our communities.” But he didn't say a thing about the electoral polar shift that will take place when the “earned citizenship” plans of Sec. Johnson, who, incidentally, was confirmed by no shortage of Republican A-raters, become a reality.

“[T]o defend firearm freedom, we need more than just firearm freedom,” LaPierre admitted, reinforcing a recent NRA advertising campaign promoting the message that all rights are connected. “One right depends on another. They’re all cut from the same cloth of what it means to be free people.”

They’re also all the proper concern of NRA, regardless of what “single issue” apologists claim either out of ignorance or when trying to deflect from what they know to be a failing. That’s because NRA’s bylaws, which are not optional, require directors and paid staff to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States [and] promote public safety, law and order, and the national defense.”

That would be the same Constitution established with the express purpose and mandate to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...”

“So take our country back from the liars, the cheats, the press and political elites who want to take away our ability to define our own destiny,” LaPierre concluded, never once acknowledging that others may be trying to define that destiny for us while NRA is not lifting a finger to stop it, and is instead actively empowering those taking away our control.

Without knowing why, all we can do is speculate. Perhaps LaPierre has some special knowledge that contradicts all information that’s been made public to date, and he knows amnesty will not produce the feared results. If so, it seems bewildering -- if not inexcusable -- that he doesn't share such knowledge, instead of exhibiting continued deliberate indifference and a directed NRA Media blackout. Only candid assurances backed by credible and provable reasons will allay these concerns and put to rest conjecture that money and access may be the underlying reasons behind his silence.

Unfortunately, the incentive to do that does not appear competitive with keeping on doing what he's doing.