NRA leader Wayne LaPierre: Background checks wouldn't stop 'mental defectives' from mass shootings

National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre trashed the mentally ill on Monday while suggesting it is a gateway to government-mandated weapons confiscation.

"It's a speed bump for the law-abiding," he said in an interview with Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney. "It has no effect in the real world on stopping crime or keeping mental defectives from committing horrible acts."

LaPierre also said that background checks would be selectively enforced and abused.

You're creating a registry of all the law-abiding people in the country that own firearms," he said. "I know the politicians say, 'Hey, we'll never use that list to confiscate.' That's a pretty darn tall order to believe a promise from people in this town right now."

Despite LaPierre's rhetoric, polls have shown widespread approval for more stringent background checks. Varney, who started the interview by expressing his support for background checks, asked LaPierre if he would be willing to support an expansion of the "instant check" system currently in use.

"We supported it for dealers, but it's never gonna work for 100 million law-abiding gun owners that sell firearms, shotguns, rifles, hunters to hunters, farmers to farmers, relatives to relatives all the time," LaPierre responded. "Criminals will never go through that system."

LaPierre also said "the Loughners in Tucson, the Holmes in Aurora, the Lantzes in Connecticut" to be flagged for possible psychological issues, name-checking the men behind three of the country's more recent mass shootings.

"The HIPAA laws, the privacy laws, the educational secrecy laws are so strong, they are never gonna be on a list, they are never gonna be recognizable, and they'll never be in the system. Therefore, the only people that will be are people like you and me."

Watch LaPierre's interview with Varney, as posted by Media Matters on Monday, below.