After a week during which his organization met with Vice President Joe Biden to talk proposals to curb the nation's rash of gun violence, NRA President David Keene predicted Sunday that two of the White House's big proposals would fail in Congress.
Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley, Keene said that both the assault weapons ban and a curb on high capacity magazines wouldn't hold up in Congress.
"I would say that the likelihood is that they are not going to be able to get an assault weapons ban through this Congress," Keene said. "The fact is that we live in a society where first of all, we have constitutional rights, and secondly, there are millions upon millions of Americans who value the rights that they have under the Second Amendment."
And a limit on certain high-capacity magazines wouldn't hold up, he suggested, because they are too cheap to be effectively regulated.
"Even David Gregory could find one," Keene quipped, referring to when the "Meet the Press" host held up a high-capacity magazine during NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre's appearance on the show last month.
On Friday, the White House brushed back on suggestions that it would not pursue a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban as part of its overall strategy to curb gun violence. White House spokesman Matt Lehrich called reports that President Barack Obama wouldn't look for reinstatement false, saying because it would be "politically difficult" wasn't a concern.
Later on "State of the Union," Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin agreed that an assault weapons ban couldn't pass as a standalone bill. Manchin, a Democrat in the deep red state of West Virginia, was one of the most prominent members of Congress to signal a change in his thinking on gun control after the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn.
But Manchin said a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 would have to be combined with other measures to get through Congress.
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