One day after Kirsten Gillibrand slammed the National Rifle Association (NRA) as the “worst organization in this country,” the group on Monday posted an effusive letter it received from Gillibrand in 2008 in which she praised “the work that the NRA does to protect gun owners rights” and said she hoped to work with it “for many years in Congress.”
At a fiery Fox News town hall in Dubuque, Iowa Sunday, Gillibrand charged that the NRA cares “more about their profits than the American people” and “lies” for the sake of profit. But the NRA has countered that Gillibrand, whose campaign has attracted at most 1 percent support in national and early voting state polls, was a cynical political opportunist trying to gin up support for her candidacy.
“Gillibrand called us the worst org in the country, but when she represented NY20, she wrote us: ‘I appreciate the work that the NRA does to protect gun owners rights, and I look forward to working with you for many years,'” the NRA wrote on Twitter. “Now that she’s looking to crack 1%, she’ll say anything.”
Gillibrand, according to the NRA, sent the letter to NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox on Sept. 19, 2008, when she was a member of Congress representing a rural district in upstate New York. The ILA, or Institute for Legislative Action, is the lobbying arm of the NRA.
“I want to be very clear that I always have and always will believe that the correct interpretation of the 2nd amendment [sic] is that it applies to an individual’s right to carry guns, and does not apply generally to the National Guard or a group of individuals in a State,” Gillibrand wrote to Cox, following what she described as a meeting with him the previous August.