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Cheney woos NRA members
Vows to keep up fight for gun rights
By Susan Kuczka
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 18, 2004
PITTSBURGH -- Vice President Dick Cheney, addressing the annual convention of the National Rifle Association on Saturday night, promised that if re-elected, he and President Bush would keep fighting to protect gun owners' rights guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.
"It states, after all, that the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," Cheney said in his keynote speech to about 4,000 people at the NRA's 133rd annual meeting and convention.
"This means, as the attorney general has stated unequivocally, that law-abiding citizens of the United States have the individual right to own a firearm," Cheney said.
The vice president also attacked the voting record of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, saying, "John Kerry's approach to the 2nd Amendment has been to regulate, regulate and then regulate some more."
Earlier Saturday, NRA leaders sounded the same anti-Kerry theme.
"There is no greater threat to gun ownership than John Kerry as president," NRA First Vice President Sandra Froman said. "He would appoint Supreme Court justices who say an individual does not have the right to keep and bear arms."
A statement from the Kerry campaign Saturday said the senator "is a lifelong hunter, supports the 2nd Amendment and will defend hunting rights."
With an estimated 4 million members nationwide, the NRA claimed credit for helping swing a handful of contested states to the Bush camp in the 2000 presidential election.
Four years ago, campaign disclosure forms show, the group spent nearly $18 million to back primarily Republican candidates, including more than $1 million on ads to support Bush.
Cheney's speech came amid disenchantment among some gun rights advocates over Bush's support for an extension of the assault weapons ban.
The decade-old ban, outlawing the manufacture and sale of certain assault-style semiautomatic weapons, is set to expire in September without congressional action.
Bush, however, supported recent legislative efforts in the Senate to block liability suits against gun manufacturers. But the measure failed in the Senate when gun-control advocates tacked on several amendments, including the extension of the assault weapons ban.
When Kerry recently posed with a hunting rifle, NRA leaders viewed it as an attempt to woo their members as well as the rest of the estimated 80 million gun owners nationwide.
Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, called the photo a fraud. "Like all anti-gun imposters, John Kerry wants you to think he's one of us. He must think we're idiots," Cox said.
The NRA, a powerful lobbying force in Washington with its $180 million annual budget, will not issue a formal endorsement in the presidential race until after its summer convention.
But it was clear Saturday that the NRA would seek Kerry's defeat in the fall.
The cover of the May issue of the group's monthly magazine greeted conventioneers with a photo of Kerry giving a thumbs-up sign to fellow Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts following the defeat of the gun-liability legislation.
In bold letters, the headline said: "John Kerry to Gun Owners: Stick It!"
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