The National Rifle Association (NRA) is taking Rep. Thomas Massie to task over statements he made on his Facebook account this weekend regarding H.R. 4477, the Fix-NICS bill.
“As Chairman of the Second Amendment Caucus, I’m blowing the whistle on the swamp,” Massie said. He believes that H.R. 4477, and its Senate counterpart introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), will “expand the national background check database.”
The NRA is coming out against Massie to stand with leftist gun control fanatics Feinstein and Schumer in favor of this federal regulatory power-grab.
“The bill went through a very thorough and public markup session of its own. And like the concealed carry reciprocity bill, the Fix NICS bill would also have enough votes to pass on its own,” the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action said in a response to Massie’s post.
Massie described how the bill was rushed through the Congress and the Judiciary Committee before the public could understand exactly what was in it, a process he described as “how the swamp works.”
“This bill broke the previous records for fast track legislation. It was voted out of committee within hours of being introduced in the House,” Massie said. “…the text of the bill wasn’t even discoverable by the public on congress.gov until after the bill passed out of committee!”
This is the process that the legislative arm of the NRA is actively defending. The NRA-ILA only cherry-picked certain claims of Massie’s Facebook post to selectively “refute.” They also failed to mention that the legislation they proudly support was originally “introduced in the House by a Democrat two weeks ago.”
“In a very unusual move, the bill was re-introduced verbatim by a Republican two weeks later, with language added to it to commission a bump-stock study,” Rep. Massie said. “Six Republicans in Judiciary Committee weren’t persuaded by the switcheroo, and voted No. However, because every Democrat voted yes and some Republicans voted yes at the urging of the Chairman, the bill made it out of committee.”
This is not the only time the NRA has supported gun control in 2017. Following the Las Vegas shooting at Mandalay Bay by deranged leftist terrorist Stephen Paddock, the NRA came out in favor of allowing unaccountable federal bureaucrats more discretion to regulate bump stocks, which were allegedly used by the killer to increase the firing capacity of his semi-automatic firearms during his rampage.
“I think it’s a horrible idea, to ask the ATF to contort existing law,” Rep. Massie said of the NRA’s plan last month.
This was not an aberration on behalf of the NRA. Despite its supposed pro-2nd Amendment bona fides, the NRA has supported gun control many times throughout its history. The organization even publicly admonished open carry supporters in recent years during the Obama administration’s frenzied push for gun control. Rep. Massie on the other hand is a staunch proponent of open carry, and has pushed for the legalization of open carry in Washington D.C. for many years.
Examining their records, it is clear that Rep. Massie has lived up to his rhetoric, while the disingenuous lobbyists of the NRA have not.
The NRA. Massie had some bad sources or something.