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Friday, Mar 15, 2013 3:51 PM UTC

At CPAC, Wayne LaPierre tackles rape

The NRA's Wayne LaPierre sounded off on stopping rape and why he opposes background checks

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Topics: Wayne LaPierre, NRA, CPAC, Rape, Gun Control,

At CPAC, Wayne LaPierre tackles rape (Credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

In his speech at CPAC, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre argued that “the one thing a violent rapist deserves to face is a good woman with a gun.”

LaPierre was speaking about a comment Joe Biden had made, that he tells his wife, Jill Biden, that if there’s ever a threat, “just walk out on the balcony, put that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house.”

“The vice president of the United States actually told women facing an attack to just empty a shotgun into the air. Honestly, have they just lost their minds over at the White House?” LaPierre asked.

“Some in the Colorado Legislature think women are too emotional to deal with a violent attack,” he continued, pointing to a Democratic state legislator in Colorado who argued that “you’re better off using a ballpoint pen to stab an attacker when he stops to reload,” according to LaPierre.

He was referring to state Sen. Jessie Ulibarri, who, during Colorado’s debate over gun control, talked about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting and another shooting in a supermarket in Arizona; in both cases the shooter was taken down by unarmed people when he stopped to reload. “So there are other ways to address violence, and it doesn’t mean that we have our kids exposed to a whole crossfire of multiple folks in a room shooting simultaneously,” Ulibarri said, adding: “Congressman Giffords’ life was saved, and so many others, when very valiant folks stood up to defend themselves and protect themselves and they did it with ballpoint pens.”

LaPierre then referenced a Web page by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs that purportedly told women to exercise “passive resistance” when attacked by a rapist. “The one thing a violent rapist deserves to face is a good woman with a gun,” LaPierre said.

(The school has since said that the page was “was taken out of context” and was meant to include tips that were “considered last resort options when all other defense methods have been exhausted.”)

LaPierre also decried the call for universal background checks, which he called “a placebo” because they “will only serve as universal regulation of lawful American gun owners.”

“What’s the point of registering lawful gun owners anyway? So newspapers can print their names and addresses for gangs and criminals to access?” LaPierre concluded that there are “only two ways to use that federal list of gun owners: to tax them or to take them.”

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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