Former NRA chief: Gun lobby no longer supports background checks because they supposedly don't work

At one point Thursday during a CNN townhall gathering called "Guns Under Fire," Sandy Froman, a member of the board of directors and former president of the gun-industry's mouthpiece, the National Rifle Association, sounded almost conciliatory:

"There's a lot of common ground. We don't want people who are insane to have guns, we don't want terrorists to have guns. Part of this national dialogue is coming together."

But she followed up with an objection to what the overwhelming majority of Americans support, including gun-owning Americans and even NRA members'universal background checks of anyone buying a gun from whatever source:

"The NRA is not against background checks," Froman said. "We support making sure they are enforced. We're not supporting more background checks of law-abiding citizens."

Of course, you can't know for sure that they're law-abiding until the background check is run.

Froman added that the NRA has changed its views from 1999 when it supported the FBI's National Instant Checks System that requires federally licensed firearms dealers to run background checks on anybody who wants to buy a gun from them. Froman said that system "is not working now. We have to get that working before we can add any more checks to that system.'

This would be a lot more convincing if the NRA were lobbying hard for improving the background check system. But that's not exactly high on the agenda it carries out for the gun industry that runs it.

(For more on the NRA's efforts to undermine reasonable gun-control laws of any kind, please continue reading ...)