This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," January 18, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And joining me to respond to the president's gun control proposals, the CEO, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre.
Wayne, good to see you. Thanks for being here.
WAYNE LAPIERRE, CEO & EXECUTIVE V.P., NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION: Thanks. Good to be with you, Sean.
HANNITY: Appreciate it.
(APPLAUSE)
HANNITY: As we get started, we have some breaking news and I want everybody to be aware of this. And I think this is really important breaking news. And it deals with The Journal News. Now everybody here remembers they're the ones that outed gun owners in two Westchester, New York, counties. Well, they've decided that they are removing this list, and in doing so, they actually put the following statement out.
It said: "Today The Journal News has removed the permit data from" their web site, "our decision to do so is not a concession to critics that no value was served by posting the map in the first place. On the contrary, we've heard from too many grateful community members to consider our decision to post information contained in the public record to have been a mistake. Nor is our decision made because we were intimidated by those who threatened the safety of our staffers. We know our business is a controversial one. We do not cower. But the database has been public for 27 days, and we believe those who wanted to view it have done so already. As well, with the passage of time, the data will now be outdated and inaccurate."
I think, you agree, a win?
CROWD: Yes.
HANNITY: I think they did cower, do you agree?
LAPIERRE: Yes, it was a shameful act. I mean, it told the criminals whose house to break in if they wanted today steal a gun, whose house to break into if they were completely unprotected.
And there were a lot of people out there, women being stalked, did not want their name out there and let it be known that they owned a firearm. It was a shameful act by that newspaper.
HANNITY: And we had two break-ins, we haven't been able to prove it was associated with the release of that map, but I'm suspicious.
What do you make -- the president, through his spokesmen, Stephanie Cutter, Robert Gibbs, you're about to be "Mitt Romney'd." They're now running a political campaign against you and your organization. What's your reaction to that?
LAPIERRE: You know what they forget, it's not me, it's not even the NRA, it's the vast majority of the American public that deeply believes in the Second Amendment, deeply believes they have a right to protect themselves. That there is nothing more normal than wanting to protect yourself, protect your family, take individual responsibility. And then, you know, I know the media, the president is out to shame them. They're not to be shamed. This is normal activity on good people. And it's the vast majority of the American public.
And I believe other presidents have said you're going to bow down and give up your freedom, you're going to give up your rights, we saw how that worked out. The American public is going to stand and fight for their freedom, and the NRA is going to stand and fight with them.
(APPLAUSE)
HANNITY: Let me play for you -- we're now taping this program in New York. New York now, as of this week, has the strictest gun control measures in the country. Andrew Cuomo making his case to the state -- in the legislature, said the following. I want to play it for you, get your reaction, let's roll tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO, D-N.Y.: Forget the extremists. It's simple, no one hunts with an assault rifle! No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer! And too many innocent people have died already! End the madness now! Pass safe, reasonable gun control in the State of New York! Make this state safer! Save lives! Set an example for the rest of the nation! Let them look at New York and say, this is what you can do, and this is what you should do! This is New York, the progressive capital, you show them how we lead!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Is New York safer? Are lives going it be saved?
LAPIERRE: You know, New York releases more criminals back to the street and has to re-imprison more criminals for new crimes they commit than any other state in the country except California.
I was stopped by police officers after all day on the street, saying how ridiculous that bill was, how it limits them, it limits all police officers. In the rest of the country, that's the last thing that they want enacted in their city or state.
HANNITY: Well, what you're referring to is New York police officers, if they have more than seven bullets in their gun today, they're violating the law.
LAPIERRE: What they've been telling me all day on the streets of New York.
HANNITY: Poor Bo Dietl, I mean, I want to count how many bullets are in your gun right now. But --
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: Let me ask you, seven bullets, though, is an important number. This was not by accident, because wouldn't that then, therefore, make, what, 90, 95 percent of semiautomatic handguns illegal in New York?
LAPIERRE: Well, I mean, that's what they're doing. This is an attack -- it's an attack on the Second Amendment is what it boils down to, Sean. You know, the sad thing about all of this is how little it has to do at this point with keeping children safe and how much it has to do with a decades-long attack on the Second Amendment freedom of American citizens.
And when this thing happened, this horrible tragic event, I mean, we at the NRA are about as mainstream an organization as you can get. We're 4 million members, soon going to be 5 million members. We have 11,000 police instructors, 80,000 police families in the NRA, 100,000 safety instructors, and we said, what will make people's kids safer?
We said, one thing, let's immediately put a police officer in every school in the country. Second, let's have the NRA get behind and help fund a School Shield Program, where a model program can be put in place, and given to communities all over the country, where they could adopt it to put armed security in those schools. That will immediately help kids, safer. It will either stop or mitigate a situation if it happens.
The second thing we said, the mental health system. I get stopped by police all the time that say, Wayne, every police officer knows people have been emptied from the institutions. They're back on the street. They stopped taking their medicine. And they're a danger to the community.
We haven't even put the records of those adjudicated mentally incompetent by a court of law into the National Instant Check System.
HANNITY: Why -- when you said this -- for example, we use armed guards to protect our elected politicians, our presidents, our mayors, our cabinet officials. We protect money in a bank, Hollywood stars, they hire Bo Dietl, right?
We have at courthouses, at stadiums, office buildings, airports, aren't they all -- they all have armed guards, right?
LAPIERRE: Sure.
HANNITY: Why were people attacking you for suggesting maybe retired police officers or military be put in schools to prevent this from happening?
LAPIERRE: Yes, I mean, it was ridiculous. They attacked me for opposing what doesn't work, which is one more gun law. And they attacked me for supporting what does work, which is school security.
I mean, what it really boils down to is this sanctimonious hypocrisy of the political elites and the media elites in this country. Their kids -- most of their kids when they go to school, they're protected by police in the school and armed security in school.
HANNITY: Don't we do that at colleges around the country, they have armed security guards, forces?
LAPIERRE: We do it in a third of the schools in the country, have armed security right now. When President Clinton proposed it years ago, and yet, you know, Wayne says let's make people safe and they call me crazy, everything under the sun.
Well, I could care less because what I'm proposing will make people safe. What they're proposing won't.
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