N.R.A. Declines to Meet With Obama on Gun Policy

By JACKIE CALMES  March 14, 2011

WASHINGTON — More than two months after the Tucson shootings, the administration is calling together both the gun lobby and gun safety groups to find common ground. But President Obama has no plans to take the lead in proposing further gun control legislation, aides say, and the nation’s major gun rights group is snubbing the invitation.

On Tuesday, officials at the Justice Department will meet with gun control advocates in the first of what will be a series of meetings over the next two weeks with people on different sides of the issue, including law enforcement, retailers and manufacturers, to seek agreement on possible legislative or administrative actions.

The effort follows Mr. Obama’s call, in a column on Sunday in a Tucson newspaper, to put aside “stale policy debates” and begin “a new discussion” on ways to better enforce and strengthen existing laws to keep mentally unstable, violent and criminal people from getting guns.

But the National Rifle Association, for decades the most formidable force against proposals to limit gun sales or ownership, is refusing to join the discussion — possibly dooming it from the start, given the lobby’s clout with both parties in Congress.

Administration officials had indicated they expected that the group would be represented at a meeting, perhaps on Friday.

“Why should I or the N.R.A. go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?” said Wayne LaPierre, the longtime chief executive of the National Rifle Association.

He named Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has almost no role in gun-related policies, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

“It shouldn’t be a dialogue about guns; it really should be a dialogue about dangerous people,” Mr. LaPierre said, adding that his group has supported proposals to prevent gun sales to the mentally ill, strengthen a national system of background checks and spur states to provide needed data.

Despite his opposition to joining the administration’s table, by his comments in an interview Mr. LaPierre sounded at times like the White House.

For example, a White House adviser on Monday said Mr. Obama wanted to redefine the gun debate to “focus on the people, not the guns.” The president, in his column, cited the same policy areas Mr. LaPierre mentioned as fertile ground for consensus.

And Mr. Obama emphasized, “First, we should begin by enforcing laws that are already on the books” — a line long used by the gun lobby.

Mr. Obama’s column in The Arizona Daily Star reflected his continued political caution toward an issue that for decades has polarized the country. In past weeks, aides had suggested he might give a public address expanding on his views about gun safety — an option that has now been put aside.

Mr. Obama spoke at a memorial service in Tucson four days after a gunman on Jan. 8 killed six people and wounded 13, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords. But gun safety advocates, including a group of mayors headed by Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, called on Mr. Obama to do more, including endorsing legislation to ban high-capacity magazines like those used in the Arizona attack.

Several factors have inhibited him. With Republicans now a majority in the House, legislation restricting guns has little chance of passage. And many Democrats, including Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, are opposed to stirring controversy and provoking the N.R.A.’s membership to oppose them.

Also, the White House is focused on its economic message — when it is not consumed by events abroad — and likewise has little interest in distracting from that before the 2012 election season, aides say.

In the op-ed article, Mr. Obama did not recommend particular legislative remedies, including proposals that he had backed as a presidential candidate to reinstate a ban on assault weapons that expired in 2004 and to close a loophole for gun-show sales in the federal law requiring background checks of purchasers.

Instead, he emphasized his belief that the Constitution guarantees individuals’ right to bear arms and boasted that “my administration has not curtailed the rights of gun owners — it has expanded them, including allowing people to carry their guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.”

Mr. Obama is trying on many issues, including deficit reduction, to stake out a middle ground that appeals to independent voters. Aides said polls showed that the gun issue was not a big one for independents, but that they did abhor political fights and favored politicians who compromise. The president played to that sentiment in his op-ed article — and anticipated the rifle association’s rebuff.

“Some will say nothing short of the most sweeping antigun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby,” he wrote. “Others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody’s guns.”

“But,” he added, “I have more faith in the American people than that.”