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Sunday, Jan 13, 2013 4:50 PM UTC

McCain, NRA president: Assault weapons ban won’t pass Congress

"Guns in this country have as much influence as they always have," said David Keene

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Topics: David Keene, NRA, assault weapons ban, Congress, Dianne Feinstein,

McCain, NRA president: Assault weapons ban won't pass Congress (Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Both Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and NRA president David Keene predicted that an assault weapons ban will not make it through Congress.

On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” McCian said that he doesn’t think an assault weapons ban, like the one introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would pass, nor should it.

And appearing on CNN, Keene told Candy Crowley that he thinks legislation to ban assault weapons will fail: “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 added that he thinks Joe Biden did not seriously want to hear the NRA’s proposals when they were invited to the White House. “We suspect that all he wanted to do was to say he talked to us, and now they’re going to go forward and do the things they wanted to do.”

He added: ”We’re not going to compromise on peoples’ rights when there is no evidence that doing so is going to serve a purpose.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said that an assault weapons ban won’t make it through Congress on its own. ”Assault weapons stand-alone ban on just guns alone will not, in the political reality that we have today, will not go anywhere,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It has to be comprehensive and that’s what I tried to tell the vice president and I’ve told everybody, it has to be a comprehensive approach.”

Manchin added that he and McCain would be teaming up to introduce legislation to create “a commission about mass violence.”

Jillian Rayfield is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on politics. Follow her on Twitter at @jillrayfield or email her at jrayfield@salon.com. More Jillian Rayfield.

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