By Tom Curry, NBC News national affairs writer
On NBC?s Meet the Press, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre on Sunday refused to support new gun control legislation and maintained his support for putting armed guards and police in schools in response to the Dec. 14 school shootings in Newtown, Conn.
See the Meet The Press page
?If it?s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,? LaPierre told NBC?s David Gregory.
The Atlantic's Jordan Weissmann has an inside look at the organization that made big news this week.
He added that the United States is now spending $2 billion?to train police officers in Iraq and asked why federal funds could not be spent to train school guards to protect school in the United States.
?I know there?s a media machine in this country that wants to blame guns every time something happens,? he said, but he insisted that an armed guard might have been able to stop Adam Lanza, the killer in Connecticut.
LaPierre said, ?We have no national database of these lunatics? and complained that de-institutionalization of the mentally ill had put too many dangerous people on the American streets. ?These monsters walk the streets,? LaPierre said.
He opposed further curbs on private gun sales and contended that the advocates of stringent restrictions on private gun sales want to put ?every gun sale under the thumb of the federal government.?
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the author of the 1994 ban on certain types of semiautomatic firearms which expired in 2004, has announced that she will introduce new legislation early next year. Semiautomatic firearms, including semiautomatic weapons sometimes called ?assault weapons,? fire one round per pull of the trigger.
But LaPierre called Feinstein?s bill ?a phony piece of legislation? which he predicted would not become law.
After a week of silence following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School the NRA responded, saying armed guns in schools is the answer. "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said Wayne LaPierre, NRA's executive vice president. NBC's John Harwood reports.
LaPierre?s appearance on Meet the Press followed the strong reaction over his defiant stand during a Friday press briefing about the NRA?s response to the Dec. 14 school shootings in Newtown, Conn.
Amid a national debate over what security measures school administrators should take to ensure the safety of students, gun-control advocates reacted with disbelief Friday to LaPierre?s call for armed guards in every school and his blaming of Hollywood films, video games, and music for school shootings such as the one in Connecticut.
In an impassioned statement in Washington Friday, LaPierre, the organization's CEO and executive vice president, ridiculed the idea that ?one more gun ban or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people will protect us where 20,000 other laws have failed.?
LaPierre said America has left its schoolchildren ?utterly defenseless -- and the monsters and the predators of the world know it and exploit it.?
The NRA is confronting its greatest legislative test in 20 years in the aftermath of the Connecticut shootings, as President Barack Obama and some members of Congress are moving to enact further measures to restrict gun sales and possession, most likely as part of a larger bill that would include increased funding for mental illness detection and treatment.
Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with the job of consulting with members of the Cabinet and outside organizations to come up with legislative proposals by next month.
Her bill would outlaw more than 100 specifically-named firearms as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.
After a week of calls for tighter gun restrictions, the National Rifle Association called for putting more armed security officers in the nation's schools and expressed concerns about violence portrayed in video games, movies and music. NBC's Pete Williams reports.
How firmly the NRA?s allies in Congress will oppose any new legislative initiatives from Obama, Feinstein or others remains an open question.
In a test of the NRA?s legislative influence, the House of Representatives late last year passed the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, which has not yet been acted on by the Senate.
In the House vote, 229 Republicans and 43 Democrats voted for the NRA-backed bill.
The House bill allows a person with a photo identification card and a valid permit to carry a concealed firearm in one state to carry a concealed handgun in another state in accordance with the restrictions of that second state.
Senate Democrats who have worked with the NRA in the past and who are up for re-election in 2014, such as Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska, will be pivotal in the outcome of any legislative battle in the Senate.
?I get that some want to talk about (regulating guns), but we have a broader issue and we live in a violent society and we need to look at mental health and how to make our schools safer,? Begich said Friday in an interview with the Fairbank Daily News-Miner.
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