Muscatine

The National Rifle Association emerged from a meeting today with Vice President Biden convinced that the Obama administration has nothing in mind other than restricting access to firearms.

Biden leads the White House task force on guns.

In a blistering statement, the NRA accused the White House of bad faith and declared itself ready to flex its significant lobbying muscle to thwart President Obama’s intentions.

We attended today’s White House meeting to discuss how to keep our children safe and were prepared to have a meaningful conversation about school safety, mental health issues, the marketing of violence to our kids and the collapse of federal prosecutions of violent criminals.

We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment. While claiming that no policy proposals would be “prejudged,” this Task Force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearms owners — honest, taxpaying, hardworking Americans.

We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen. Instead, we will now take our commitment and meaningful contributions to members of congress of both parties who are interested in having an honest conversation about what works — and what does not.

No doubt, the meeting was little more than window dressing, since Biden said before the session he plans to deliver his recommendations to Obama Tuesday. It’s just not credible that he is making serious revisions to his plans at this late date.

Biden suggested that among the recommendations will be universal background checks and limiting the availability of high-capacity magazines.

And while he said he wants the federal government to conduct more research into gun violence, Biden made clear that the administration’s actions would require little in the way of hard evidence that they would reduce killings.

“I’m not sure we can guarantee this will never happen again, but as the president said even if we can only save one life it would make sense,” said Biden, who added that the goal would be “to not solve every problem but diminish the probability” of mass shootings.

Society does not make rules based on the prospect of saving a single life. When it does, please turn your automobile in to the Department of Motor Vehicles.