[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]
On the 20 June 2016 edition of CNN Tonight, Don Lemon played up how the "the police commissioner of New York City said...that Congress was completely controlled...by the NRA, and that's why no sensible gun laws have been passed," and asked Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, "Do you agree with that?" The liberal politician from Connecticut responded by blasting the NRA. However, he also added a lament about how the Constitution grants each state two senators and how this sets up an obstacle to gun control supporters in Congress:
REP. JIM HIMES, (D), CONNECTICUT: Look, I don't think the NRA really controls anybody, but what the NRA does is and...Wayne LaPierre is just a master of this — is that they are just a 24/7 fear machine. So, you know, before this president was even sworn in seven year ago, Wayne LaPierre was out there telling people that his secret and hidden agenda is to take away your guns....It's just this constant fear that gets the populous really whipped up.
And Jeffrey [Toobin] is right. Now, you've got a relatively small group of voters who are fabulously intense. And the thing that Jeffrey didn't mention is that you've got a United States Senate, where North Dakota and Montana — two lightly-populated, rural states — still have two senators each, whose votes count just as much as the two senators that represent 40 million Californians. So you put that altogether, and you've got one heck of struggle on your hands.