And heck, I like baseball, but NRA is even more popular than major league baseball.
That’s Wayne Lapierre,
Lapierre joined the NRA in 1978 and has been its leader and main mouthpiece since 1991,
serving as the CEO and executive vice president.
This is how he went from working for doomed Democrat George McGovern
to being America’s chief peddler of tools of death and destruction.
And no body is more committed to keeping guns out of criminal's hands—
that’s obviously in our best interest.
Before emerging as the face of the NRA, LaPierre worked as a political consultant
to an array of Virginia Democrats during his time at Boston College,
before jumping from legislation to lobbying as ‘Executive Director of the NRA’s lobbying arm’.
There is no record of him working towards, caring about, or supporting gun rights before that time.
When LaPierre joined the association, it was a marksmanship group with a heavy focus on hunting
and conservation- basically just a bunch of people who really liked shooting guns.
The majority of Americans admire and they trust the NRA
because we always say out loud what we believe.
He quickly rose to the top of the organization, and shaped the NRA into what it is today:
an assertive-political gun lobby built on fear,
stoking paranoia into the five million who back it,
and commanding a huge amount of power over conservative politicians.
For the first time,
we also face an enemy
utterly dedicated to destroy, not just our country, but also western civilization.
If you’ve ever heard someone talking about “the government taking their guns,”
they probably learned it from LaPierre’s version of the NRA.
For freedom has never been more threatened more than it is today.
The next 650 days
are the most dangerous days in history for the 2nd Amendment
and for our personal freedom.
That’s how long President Obama has left.
When a Federal judge who strongly supports the NRA
pushed for lessening the ammo capacity of certain weapons,
LaPierre concluded that it would make no difference.
I don’t think it will. I keep saying it and you just won’t accept it,
it’s not gonna work.
And his rhetoric works.
There hasn’t been any meaningful gun reform legislation since 1994.
Through effective lobbying, and effectively buying politicians,
LaPierre commands an immense amount of power over the American government,
and he uses that to make sure gun manufacturers make as much money as possible,
no matter how many people die.
After the 2011 Tucson shooting, LaPierre blamed “Gun Free Zones” for the 19 people shot.
If Tucson tells us anything at all, It tells us this: government failed.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre,
LaPierre once again put the blame on everything but guns—
knocking the video game industry and films like “American Psycho,” and “Natural Born Killers”
for the Newtown Connecticut shooting.
There exists in this country,
sadly,
a callous, corrupt, and corrupting shadow industry
that sells and stows violence against its own people through vicious,
violent video games.
Following the massacre, LaPierre claimed the problem was that there weren’t enough guns.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Just three days after the Aurora shooting,
LaPierre sent out a paranoid letter to members of the NRA—
claiming the reelection of Obama would result in “confiscation of our firearms.”
With LaPierre at the helm, the NRA has donated more than $30 million to Trump’s campaign.
And here was somebody willing to put everything aside and go out there and take tremendous courage
and you know, go out and fight to save this country.
And it paid off.
[Cheering]
And I just said to Wayne, and I just said to Chris:
I will not let you down— remember that, I will not let you down.
So how much does LaPierre get paid for all of this?
About a million bucks,
the price it takes to be 'protected'.
Hillary Clinton would’ve been catastrophic to the second amendment uhh—
the Supreme Court, as an individual right— with her appointments would’ve eliminated the second amendment
as an individual right...
and my gosh, look at the change!
I mean, Judge Gorsuch now.
It’s all the difference in the world.
I see a tremendous pride wave out there in the heartland of the country with this President, Donald Trump.