Dem: Obama Should 'Use Bully Pulpit' to Stop NRA from 'Being Enablers of Mass Murder'

A New York Democrat said President Obama now needs to “use the bully pulpit of the presidency to lead a crusade for meaningful and strong gun control legislation.”

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“We know the gun lobby has strong support in Congress because people — members of Congress are terrified of their alleged political power,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said last night on CNN.

“But the president can lead a campaign and can make it — and can direct the moral opprobrium of the country at members of Congress or senators who refuse to support strong gun control legislation.”

Nadler didn’t want to get into what Obama did or did not do in his first term, and said what matters is what the president does now.

“The president had a lot of things on his plate. He had a depression. He had an obstructionist Congress,” he said. “What’s important is what happens now and if the president steps up and leads a crusade and we save God knows how many lives by getting something done, that’ll be great. That’ll be a monument to his administration.”

Nadler named some of the key Dem targets: automatic weapons ban, restriction on high-capacity magazines, restriction on how many guns can be purchased at one time, and eliminating gun-show exceptions.

“I know that there will probably be people on this show later or maybe there were who will say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people and, you know, you should arm more people they’ll stop the crooks,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, there was a maniac on Friday who attacked an elementary school in China with a knife, not a gun. Twenty-two children aren’t — you know, were injured. Nobody died.”

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“We have 9,146 murders with guns in the United States or deaths in the United States a couple years ago. Germany had 158, Canada 173. The United States has 15 times more than anybody else in a population base in any other industrialized country,” Nadler continued. “There’s one reason and one reason only and that’s our insane attitude toward guns. This has got to stop. And the NRA should stop. They won’t, but we should stop them from being enablers of mass murder.”

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