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FOLLOWING IS THE NRA's OFFICIAL STAND on firearm safety education, accident prevention, and policies to curb criminal misuse of guns. This is a copy of an open letter published by the NRA a few years ago. Their policy has not changed:
Here is what the National Rifle Association believes to be effective -- not in theory but in practice -- and calls upon the President's summit and Congress to consider in their search for meaningful solutions.
•Insist that schools be as safe as airports, with absolutely gun-free schools and zero tolerance for violators of the Gun-Free School Zones Act. Of 6,000 students caught at school with guns in the past 2 years, only 13 were federally prosecuted.
•Adopt and fund Project Exile nationally, a zero-tolerance policy tested and proven to immediately cut crime and save lives because every violent felon caught with a gun goes to jail for 5 years, period. Provide $50 million for the necessary investigators and prosecutors to implement Project Exile nationwide, plus $25 million to build awareness of it.
•Fund the Eddie Eagle® safety program, the most effective gun accident prevention program in existence, for every elementary classroom in America. It has already reached 11 million children, and gun accident rates are the lowest in history.
•Restore full and permanent funding for the National Instant Check System. And when a felon tries to buy a gun, prosecute him. None have been prosecuted in the past 3 years.
•Close the Hinckley loophole by making records of people adjudicated mentally incompetent available to the National Instant Check System. Insanities like John Hinckley's would not prevent a gun purchase today, because most mental records are invisible to the system.
•Stop ignoring lawbreakers who illegally provide guns to juveniles. Only 11 were federally prosecuted in the past 2 years. Arrest them and lock them up.
•Stop releasing juvenile criminals caught with guns.
•Bar all juveniles convicted of violent felonies from owning guns for life.
•Hold adults responsible for willfully and recklessly allowing access to firearms.
•Keep criminal records of violent juveniles open indefinitely, not expunged at 18 in the middle of a crime spree.
•Stop ignoring easy access to firearms by convicted felons through straw purchasers. Only 37 were federally prosecuted in 2 years.
•Admit that Right To Carry works. Properly permitted citizens who pass the background checks and training courses not only deserve that right but are a proven deterrent to crime.
Abuse is nonexistent. And though very few actually choose to carry a gun, criminals don't know which few they are.
We believe in absolute adherence to the law at gun shows and will consider instant checks there when, and only when, the Administration stops demanding new gun taxes and stops illegally compiling and retaining the records of millions of lawful gun buyers.
•We support and encourage the distribution and use of safety locks, trigger locks, gun safes or any voluntary means necessary and appropriate to keep firearms away from, or inoperable by, those who shouldn't have them.
We oppose waiting periods because they constitute prior restraint upon the lawful. We oppose specified magazine capacities because criminal behavior isn't influenced by how many bullets, magazines, guns, bombs or anything else the law says he may carry.
We oppose one-gun-a-month schemes because once there's authority to say one, there will eventually be authority to say none.
Most importantly, none of these proposals have any proven relationship to the criminal misuse of firearms.
The NRA has invested tens of millions of dollars teaching childhood accident prevention, promoting firearm safety, educating hunters, training police instructors and funding startup of Project Exile around the country.
This is far more than the federal government, the media community, citizens' groups and all summit attendees combined. More firearm legislation, like previous legislation, that is passed with no intention of enforcement is a dangerous fraud perpetrated upon the safety of the American people that must stop.
These are our positions and policies, respectfully submitted by millions of American gun owners.
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