The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has declared the National Rifle Association (NRA) a “domestic terrorist organization” in a resolution passed on Sept. 3. The officials have also urged other city, state, and the federal government to do the same.
Responding to the resolution, the NRA said in a statement to The Epoch Times that “this is just another worthless and disgusting ’soundbite remedy' to the violence epidemic gripping our nation. The same kind of attack the NRA has confronted in New York.”
“This is a reckless assault on a law-abiding organization, its members, and the freedoms they all stand for. We remain undeterred—guided by our values and belief in those who want to find real solutions to gun violence,” the organization added.
“I will do everything that I possibly can to call them out on what they are, which is a domestic terrorist organization,” she told the news broadcaster.
The designation comes amid a heated debate over gun ownership with Democratic lawmakers and 2020 candidates pushing for stricter gun control following mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas.
“It’s all about special interests and it has to stop,” Biden said. “The idea that we don’t have elimination of assault-type weapons, magazines that can hold multiple bullets in them. It’s absolute mindless. It’s no violation of the Second Amendment. It’s just a bow to special interests of the gun manufacturers and the NRA.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has acknowledged that gun violence is a national public health emergency but emphasized the problem is not with guns rather the people pulling the trigger, reiterating that the mentally ill should not have guns.
He has repeatedly said his administration was working on expanding background checks and considered other measures like red flag laws to curb gun violence.
“We’re working on background checks. There are things we can do. But we already have very serious background checks. We have strong background checks. We can close up the gaps. We can do things that are very good and things that, frankly, gun owners want to have done,” Trump said.