Washington Free Beacon editor in chief Matthew Continetti said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D.) is "being dishonest" for claiming the National Rifle Association doesn't care if they sell guns to illegal owners.
Continetti appeared on Fox News' Special Report Monday, where he participated in a discussion about the internal battles at the NRA and the ongoing feud with Cuomo and New York State Attorney General Letitia James (D.), who opened an investigation into the tax-exempt status of the NRA.
Host Bret Baier played a clip of Cuomo at the beginning of the segment castigating the NRA.
"The NRA's goal is to sell more guns and they don't care if they sell them to legal owners or illegal owners. They want to sell more guns," Cuomo said.
Katie Pavlich, one of the panelists and Townhall.com editor, briefly talked about the internal strife among NRA board members and called Cuomo for being dishonest.
"When it comes to what Andrew Cuomo said about the NRA, I just have to address this," Pavlich said. "The NRA does not sell firearms. The NRA is a civil liberties organization that has been around since 1871 that protects the Second Amendment rights of Americans all across the country, so they are fighting an attorney general in New York and a governor who would be leftist heroes if they were to take the NRA down."
"For Governor Cuomo to lie about what the NRA actually does in favor of politics when they don't do any of the things that he alleges and have been on the forefront of actually introducing legislation to stop criminals and violent offenders, and people with mental health issues from getting guns, really is just very dishonest," Pavlich continued.
Continetti said the plot of the internal and external battles with the NRA is sometimes more complicated than the Game of Thrones.
"Katie is right. Cuomo is being dishonest. This issue isn't with the NRA. It's with the voters and that's the voters is where the NRA draws their power from," Continetti said. "You can get rid of the NRA, which isn't going to happen, but even if they did, you would still have a huge number of Americans who care passionately about their Second Amendment rights, believe they are critical to American freedoms, and will tell Congress to defend them when they are under threat."