CPAC2014: ‘IRS Is A Weapon,’ ‘Dishonest Media Is America’s Greatest Threat,’ Says NRA’s Wayne LaPierre

Wayne LaPierre, boss of the National Rifle Association, told conservatives gathered at CPAC 2014 in Washington Thursday that they’re on their own with a hostile media and the IRS after them.

Urging the audience at the premier annual gathering of the American right to stand with his group to protect the Second Amendment and freedom in America, LaPierre, officially the NRA's executive vice president, promised the gun lobby will reclaim the nation, as it refuses to “go quietly into the night.”

“Freedom has never needed our defense more than now,” LaPierre declared. “Almost everywhere you look, something has gone wrong. You feel it in your heart. You know it in your gut: Something in our country has gone wrong.”

“Core freedoms that always defined us as a nation,” like freedom of speech and privacy, are being trampled, LaPierre charged, by “political and media elites” who are “lying to us.”

“You know they are,” he said. “They lie bills into law, pass bills they haven’t read and then defend them on television."

“The IRS is now a weapon,” LaPierre said, “a weapon to punish anyone who has disagreed with them. ... That means all of you."

The NRA leader was alluding to a supposed scandal last year where it was alleged that the tax agency was targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups for additional scrutiny during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. The debate continues in the U.S. House of Representatives -- even though an inspector general has said there were no political motives behind the incident -- especially as the IRS remains responsible for enforcing the tax mandate in the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Republicans have tried more than 40 times to repeal the health insurance law, which they believe is a bad policy that is killing jobs.

“Rather than expose government dishonesty like they used to, the media elite whitewash it all,” LaPierre said.

A dishonest national news media, LaPierre added, is one of the greatest threats to America because it doesn’t provide a “level playing field for the truth.”

“Here’s how you know the media is lying,” he said. “They still call themselves journalists.”

The press, he said, has “never been honest about the NRA.”

“They hate us,” he told the CPAC crowd, but “NRA members will never submit nor surrender to the national media.”

LaPierre also urged attendees to visit the NRA booth at CPAC.

“We are on our own. That’s a certainty,” LaPierre said. “When you’re on your own, the surest way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”