Country singer Eric Church said he blames the National Rifle Association (NRA) for holding up gun control legislation after a gunman killed dozens of people at a Las Vegas country music festival last year.
Church told Rolling Stone for a story this week that he blames gun lobbyists for why nothing more has been done to prevent mass shootings.
“I blame the lobbyists. And the biggest in the gun world is the NRA,” he said.
The singer called for a ban on bump stocks, improved background checks and closing the "gun show loophole" that allows for guns to be purchased from private sellers without a background check.
The NRA has been a “roadblock,” Church said.
“I don’t care who you are — you shouldn’t have that kind of power over elected officials,” Church said. “To me it’s cut-and-dried — the gun-show (loophole) would not exist if it weren’t for the NRA, so at this point in time, if I was an NRA member, I would think I had more of a problem than the solution.”
Church said his views on ammunition and gun availability changed after a gunman opened fire from a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring more than 800 others at the Route 91 Harvest music festival.
“I’m a Second Amendment guy,” Church said. “That’s in the Constitution, it’s people’s right, and I don’t believe it’s negotiable. But nobody should have that many guns and that much ammunition and we don’t know about it.”
“Nobody should have 21 AKs and 10,000 rounds of ammunition and we don’t know who they are,” he continued. “Something’s gotta be done so that a person can’t have an armory and pin down a Las Vegas SWAT team for six minutes. That’s f---ed up.”
Church told the magazine that he went though an angry “funk” for about six months after the October shooting.
One country music fan, 29-year-old Sonny Melton, was reportedly buried in an Eric Church T-shirt.
“Something broke in me that night, and it still hasn’t healed,” Church told Rolling Stone. “There’s a part of me that hopes it haunts me forever.”
Dozens of House Democrats renewed a call for President Trump to back legislation banning bump stocks this week.
Bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire more rapidly, were used in the Las Vegas shooting.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has proposed a rule to regulate bump stocks like machine guns, a move that would essentially ban the devices outright.
MGM Resorts International, the owner of the Mandalay Bay hotel and the Route 91 Harvest festival, filed lawsuits against more than 1,000 victims in order to avoid liability.
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know...naction-on-gun
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