NRA chief: ‘Charade’ on guns was revealed in State of the Union

President Obama’s gun-control push was revealed as a “charade” during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, according to the leader of the National Rifle Association.

NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said Obama’s speech exposed the “fraudulent intentions” behind his call for new restrictions on firearms and high-capacity magazines.

“It was only a few weeks ago when they were marking their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting school children from harm," LaPierre said. "That charade ended at the State of the Union, when the president exposed their fraudulent intentions. It's not about keeping kids safe at school. That wasn't even mentioned in the president's speech."

Speaking at the National Wild Turkey Federation convention in Nashville, LaPierre said proponents of stricter gun laws are really just trying to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

"They only care about their decades-long, decades-old gun control agenda," LaPierre said. "Ban every gun they can. Tax every gun sold. And register every American gun owner. The president has taken the art of public deception and manipulation to a whole new level."

He vowed that defenders of the Second Amendment would “stand and fight."

"We will not be duped by the hypocrisy in the White House, or the Congress, who would deny our right to semi-automatic technology and the magazines we need to defend ourselves," LaPierre said.

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Obama on Tuesday night prodded Congress to hold votes on universal background checks and other gun restrictions. He cited last year’s massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., as a reason to take action.

“If you want to vote ‘no,’ that’s your choice,” Obama said. “But these proposals deserve a vote. Because in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun.”

LaPierre said the president’s proposals would do nothing to prevent tragedies similar to Newtown, and argued universal background checks wouldn’t stop criminals from obtaining weapons.

"The people who will be checked if the president gets his way are the law-abiding, sane, decent Americans," LaPierre said. "It's going to be our names, the names of good people that will be put into this massive database subject to federal registration and subject to abuse of your privacy. And none of it … does anything to keep our children safer in schools.”

Instead of stricter gun laws, LaPierre has called for armed guards in every American school.

"We're calling for that because when it comes to keeping our family and our children safe, nothing else matters," LaPierre said.

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