“Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver blasted the National Rifle Association Sunday night for its effectiveness in preventing new gun control legislation from moving, just a week after a mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub killed 50 people, including the shooter.
“To be fair to the NRA, it’s not surprising they take a hard line on gun control legislation,” Oliver said. “They’re an advocacy group, it’s what they’re supposed to do. What is shocking is just how successful they’ve been at it.”
The British comedian said that after another mass shooting incident, the lawmakers are back again with “weak legislation doomed to failure.” The Senate on Monday is set to take up a series of gun control amendments that have failed in the past, but have been given another chance after the Orlando attack.
Still, none are expected to pass, as 60 votes are needed for them to advance, and the two parties are split on all four proposals.
The “Last Week Tonight” host said that the NRA “don’t just manage to block legislation concerning guns, they’ve managed to block information concerning them, too.”
In 1996, the Dickey Amendment was added to a congressional bill that mandated that “none of the funds made available … at the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” That amendment, supported by the NRA, has served as a de facto ban on research, and attempts to overturn it have failed.
Oliver said that it was “an extremely ‘dickey’ thing to do.”
The NRA has also successfully prevented the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from having a “database electronically searchable by name when tracing the origins of firearms,” he said.
“How the f—k has the NRA managed to accomplish all of this?” he questioned.
“[T]he Dickey Amendment is emblematic of the chokehold the NRA has over even basic gun data, and it should obviously be overturned. But the hard truth is: NRA members seem to care more consistently about preventing gun control than most of us do about passing it.”
In the wake of the deadly Sandy Hook Elementary School attack that killed 20 children and six adults, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., proposed a gun control amendment that required universal background checks on all commercial sales of guns.
“The truth about politics is it’s about showing up. Remember the Manchin-Toomey amendment?” Oliver said. “Well, a national poll at that time found that 88 percent of people supported universal background checks,” and yet the proposal failed.
He asked his viewers to call up their congressmen or congresswomen repeated to repeal the Dickey Amendment, because it “doesn’t take much to outnumber the NRA,” he concluded.
