A prominent gun-rights advocate claims his group’s staff was in the room during the drafting of the recently unveiled proposal to expand gun-purchase background checks and said that “we snookered the other side — they haven’t figured it out yet.”
Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, made the remarks at a speech in Portland, Ore., on Friday, according to video on Dan Sandini’s website, Daylight Disinfectant.
The remarks came shortly before the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), for which Mr. Gottlieb serves as chairman, announced Sunday it is endorsing the compromise measure introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, and Patrick J. Toomey, Pennsylvania Republican.
The 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization claims 650,000 members and supporters nationwide. The two groups list the same Bellevue, Wash., contact information as their physical mailing address on their respective websites.
Mr. Gottlieb said that despite claims to the contrary, the amendment that would expand checks to sales online and at gun shows is “not registration” and went on to list a host of gun-rights protections in the measure, such as allowing interstate handgun sales for dealers and protections for veterans, for example.
“It’s a Christmas tree,” Mr. Gottlieb said. “We just hung a million ornaments on it.”
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“We’re taking the background check and making it a pro-gun bill,” he added. “Unfortunately, some of my colleagues haven’t quite figured it out yet because they weren’t sitting in the room writing it,” he continued. “My staff was. I’ll be perfectly candid about it. This will probably break on Monday in the Wall Street Journal.”
“If you really read what’s in the Manchin-Toomey bill — man, it’s a godsend,” he went on to say. “We win rights back like crazy.”
“I think we snookered the other side,” he said. “They haven’t figured it out yet.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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