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BANGKOK: More than 130 Rohingya migrants have landed on Thai soil in less than 24 hours, a local official said Thursday, as the kingdom grapples with a flurry of arrivals from the Myanmar minority group.
Some 88 Rohingya came ashore at Phra Thong island in the south of the country on Wednesday in full view of television cameras, according to Kuraburi district chief for Manit Pienthong.
Another 48 landed on the Andaman sea island on Thursday morning claiming they were Royingya, Manit said, adding they were sent to immigration officials in the provincial capital of Phangnga to start the process of returning them to Myanmar.
Over the last week hundreds of Myanmar migrants have been arrested in police sweeps of remote areas in rubber plantations near the border with Malaysia, leading the UNHCR to try to confirm whether any of them plan to seek asylum.
The UN's refugee agency said Wednesday it had received permission from Thailand to visit about 850 people, many thought to be Rohingya, held after raids on camps in the Thai south.
Thousands of Rohingya, a minority group not recognised as citizens in Myanmar, have fled communal unrest in the country's western Rakhine state, heading to Thailand and other countries.
Many take to makeshift boats and drift south to the Thai coast.
Rights groups have criticised Thailand for failing to help Rohingya who reach its territory, instead pushing them back to Myanmar or into neighbouring countries including Malaysia, which offers sanctuary to the minority group.
-AFP/ac
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- Despite supporters' hopes that this time it's different, President Barack Obama's new call for restricting some semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines will face deeply entrenched resistance in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and could be a long shot even in the Democratic-led Senate.
Any gun legislation sent to the House "is going to have to pass with most Democrats and a few Republicans," said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the Rothenberg Political Report. "This would be an even more high-profile bill."
And Obama's call for Congress to reinstate the federal ban on military-style rifles that expired in 2004 "is a further reach than some of the other proposals that are being tossed around," Gonzales said.
"There is no way that it is going to pass with a majority of Republican support," he said. "That is just the reality of the situation. It is going to take virtually all the Democrats, and all the Democrats won't vote for that."
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden laid out a package of measures aimed at reducing gun violence Wednesday, just over a month after the December massacre at a Connecticut elementary school. The killings of 26 people there followed a July rampage in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, that left 12 dead and the August attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that killed another six.
"The world has changed, and it's demanding action," said Biden, who led a White House task force on gun violence after the Connecticut slayings.
But before the announcement, local officials in at least three states vowed to resist any new gun controls. And Second Amendment fans have poured out their vituperation online, some floridly warning of a power grab by the Obama administration.
Texas state Rep. Steve Toth told CNN on Wednesday that he'll introduce legislation that would make it illegal to enforce a federal gun ban.
"We're going to do everything we can to call people back to the belief and the understanding that we're a constitutional republic and that our rights do not come from Congress," he said. "Our rights come from God and are enumerated in the Constitution."
And in a video that spread virally across the Internet, the head of a Tennessee gun training and accessory company warned "all you patriots" to "get ready to fight" if the Obama administration took steps to restrict firearms.
"I am not letting my country be ruled by a dictator. I'm not letting anybody take my guns. If it goes one inch further, I'm gonna start killing people," Tactical Response CEO James Yeager vowed. In a later video, in which he's accompanied by his attorney, Yeager apologized "for letting my anger get the better of me" and cautioned viewers, "It's not time for any type of violent action."
Opinion: NRA's paranoid fantasy
Obama on Wednesday signed 23 orders that don't require congressional approval that he said would stiffen background checks on gun buyers and expand safety programs in schools. And he called on Congress to restrict ammunition magazines to no more than 10 rounds and to require a background check for anyone buying a gun, whether at a store or in a private sale or gun show.
The steps that require legislative action are likely to bump up against the often-visceral opposition of lawmakers from conservative districts -- and some of their more outspoken constituents.
Most Republicans in the House of Representatives have top rankings from the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun-rights lobby, which quickly criticized the White House plans.
But it's not just Republicans: Many Democrats, particularly in the conservative South and rural West, are vocal gun-rights supporters as well.
"Guns have been one of the key issues that more moderate Democrats have used to express their independence from the Democratic Party, and this gun talk is putting a strain on that independence," Gonzales said. Though they might be willing to support proposals such as a ban on large-capacity magazines, they're unlikely to vote to ban "an actual gun," he said.
"You can just see the ads -- 'They are taking guns away' -- where with these other items it is different," Gonzales said.
Even in the Senate, where Democrats control the chamber, Democratic leadership sources told CNN that passing any new legislation will be extremely difficult. More than a dozen vulnerable Democrats from conservative states will likely resist much of what the president is pushing, the sources said.
Those sources say they have no intention of putting their members in politically vulnerable position on a gun measure unless they are sure it can reach the president's desk. That means not only getting enough red-state Democrats on board, but getting enough Republicans to break a possible GOP filibuster.
But Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-New York, said the tide appears to have shifted in favor of gun control after the Connecticut killings.
A CNN/Time magazine/ORC International poll released Wednesday found 55% of Americans generally favor stricter gun control laws, with 56% saying that it's currently too easy to buy guns in this country -- but only 39% say that stricter gun controls would reduce gun violence all by themselves.
McCarthy said Senate approval "might even give some members of Congress the spine to do the right thing."
"You know, the NRA is not in line with an awful lot of their members, and that is something we're counting on to go forward," said McCarthy, whose husband was among the six killed when a deranged gunman opened fire on a Long Island commuter train in 1993
December's killings have "gone to the heart of every mother, father, grandparent thinking about their children, grandchildren. We have to do something," she added.
CNN's Dan Merica contributed to this report.
Updated 11:20 p.m. ET
SOUTH BEND, Ind. Notre Dame said a story that star Manti Te'o's girlfriend had died of leukemia a loss he said inspired him all season and helped him lead the Irish to the BCS title game turned out to be a hoax apparently perpetrated against the linebacker.
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Notre Dame Fighting Irish Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick held a press conference late Wednesday about the apparent hoax Wednesday after Deadspin.com said it could find no record that Lennay Kekua ever existed.
"This was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we can't fully understand," Swarbrick said.
CBS News and its morning program, "CBS This Morning," were among the many news outlets that reported on the "hoax" girlfriend's death. "CBS This Morning" will have an update on the report Thursday.
The Notre Dame athletic director insisted "several things" led him to believe Te'o did not create the girlfriend himself after the university's investigation into the situation, led by a private investigative firm.
"Manti was the victim of that hoax. He has to carry that with him for a while. In many ways, Manti was the perfect mark because he's the guy who was so willing to believe in others," Swarbrick said. "The pain was real. The grieving was real. The affection was real."
By Te'o's own account, she was an "online" girlfriend.
"This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her," he said in statement.
"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating."
"In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was."
The linebacker's father, Brian Te'o, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press in early October that he and his wife had never met Kekua, saying they were hoping to meet her at the Wake Forest game in November. The father said he believed the relationship was just beginning to get serious when she died.
Swarbrick likened the situation to the 2010 movie "Catfish," in which "young filmmakers document their colleague's budding online friendship" with an allegedly young woman that turns out also to be a hoax.
The university said its coaches were informed by Te'o and his parents on Dec. 26 that Te'o had been the victim of what appeared to be a hoax.
Someone using a fictitious name "apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia," the school said.
Swarbrick said the investigation revealed "several" perpetrators, although the exact number is unclear. He said the university became convinced of the hoax based on "the joy they were taking...referring to what they accomplished and what they had done."
Te'o talked freely about the relationship after her supposed death and how much she meant to him.
In a story that appeared in the South Bend Tribune on Oct. 12, Manti's father, Brian, recounted a story about how his son and Kekua met after Notre Dame had played at Stanford in 2009. Brian Te'o also told the newspaper that Kekua had visited Hawaii and the met with his son. Brian Te'o told the AP in an interview in October that he and his wife had never met Manti's girlfriend but they had hoped to at the Wake Forest game in November. The father said he believed the relationship was just beginning to get serious when she died.
The Tribune released a statement saying: "At the Tribune, we are as stunned by these revelations as everyone else. Indeed, this season we reported the story of this fake girlfriend and her death as details were given to us by Te'o, members of his family and his coaches at Notre Dame."
The week before Notre Dame played Michigan State on Sept. 15, coach Brian Kelly told reporters when asked that Te'o's grandmother and a friend had died. Te'o didn't miss the game. He said Kekua had told him not to miss a game if she died. Te'o turned in one of his best performances of the season in the 20-3 victory in East Lansing, and his playing through heartache became a prominent theme during the Irish's undefeated regular season.
"My family and my girlfriend's family have received so much love and support from the Notre Dame family," he said after that game. "Michigan State fans showed some love. And it goes to show that people understand that football is just a game, and it's a game that we play, and we have fun doing it. But at the end of the day, what matters is the people who are around you, and family. I appreciate all the love and support that everybody's given my family and my girlfriend's family."
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Te'o went on the become a Heisman Trophy finalist, finishing second in the voting, and leading Notre Dame to its first appearance in the BCS championship.
He was asked again about his girlfriend on Jan. 3 prior to the BCS title game, saying: "This team is very special to me, and the guys on it have always been there for me, through the good times and the bad times. I rarely have a quiet time to myself because I always have somebody calling me, asking, `Do you want to go to the movies?' Coach is always calling me asking me, `Are you OK? Do you need anything?'"
Te'o and the Irish lost the title game to Alabama, 42-14 on Jan. 7. He has graduated and was set to begin preparing for the NFL combine and draft at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., this week.
Four days ago Te'o posted on his Twitter account: "Can't wait to start training with the guys! Workin to be the best! The grind continues! (hash)Future"
Te'o's statement also said: "It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life.
"I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been.
"Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I'm looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft."
Notre Dame's athletic director and the star of its near-championship football team said the widely-reported death of the star's girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and the player said he was duped by it as well.
Manti Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.
The university's athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, said it has been investigating the "cruel hoax" since Te'o approached officials in late December to say he believed he had been tricked.
Private investigators hired by the university subsequently monitored online chatter by the alleged perpetrators, Swarbrick said, adding that he was shocked by the "casual cruelty" it revealed.
"They enjoyed the joke," Swarbrick said, comparing the ruse to the popular film "Catfish," in which filmmakers revealed a person at the other end of an online relationship was not who they said they were.
"While we still don't know all of the dimensions of this ... there are certain things that I feel confident we do know," Swarbrick said. "The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax, perpetrated for reasons we don't understand."
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Te'o said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te'o's grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te'o at Notre Dame and in the media.
"While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, 'I love you,'" Te'o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death.
Now, responding to a story first reported by the sports website Deadspin, Te'o has acknowledged that Kekua never existed. The website reported today that there were no records of a woman named Lennay Kekua anywhere.
Te'o denied that he was in on the hoax.
"This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online," Te'o said in a statement released this afternoon. "We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her."
Swarbrick said he expected Te'o to give his version of events at a public event soon, perhaps Thursday, and that he believed Te'o's representatives were planning to disclose the truth next week until today's story broke.
Deadspin reported that the image attached to Kekua's social media profiles, through which the pair interacted, was of another woman who has said she did not even know Te'o or know that her picture was being used. The website reported that it traced the profiles to a California man who is an acquaintance of Te'o and of the woman whose photo was stolen.
"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," Te'o said.
Good news for pushy parents. If you want your child to excel musically, you now have better justification for starting their lessons early. New evidence comes from brain scans of 36 highly skilled musicians, split equally between those who started lessons before and after the age of 7, but who had done a similar amount of training and practice.
MRI scans revealed that the white matter in the corpus callosum – the brain region that links the two hemispheres – had more extensive wiring and connectivity in the early starters. The wiring of the late starters was not much different from that of non-musician control participants. This makes sense as the corpus callosum aids speed and synchronisation in tasks involving both hands, such as playing musical instruments.
"I think we've provided real evidence for something that musicians and teachers have suspected for a long time, that early training can produce long-lasting effects on performance and the brain," says Christopher Steele of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and head of the team.
Steele says that younger-trained musicians may have an advantage because their training coincides with a key period of brain development . At age 7 or 8, the corpus callosum is more receptive than ever to the alterations in connectivity necessary to meet the demands of learning an instrument.
However, he stresses that these connectivity adaptations are no guarantee of musical genius. "What we're showing is that early starters have some specific skills and accompanying differences in the brain, but these things don't necessarily make them better musicians," he says. "Musical performance is about skill, but it is also about communication, enthusiasm, style and many other things we don't measure. So while starting early may help you express your genius, it won't make you a genius," he says.
Nor should older aspiring musicians despair. "They should absolutely not give up. It is never too late to learn a skill," says Steele.
Journal reference: Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.3578-12.2013
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MELBOURNE: China's top player Li Na battled into the third round of the Australian Open on Wednesday but she was put through her paces by Olga Govortsova before clinching a straight-sets victory.
The former French Open winner, who is among the leading contenders at Melbourne Park, rallied past the Belarusian 6-2, 7-5 in 82 minutes and next plays either Czech Kristyna Pliskova or Romania's Sorana Cirstea.
If Li gets through that encounter, she faces a potential fourth round clash with local hope and ninth seed Samantha Stosur.
Li came out of the blocks with gritty determination, smashing through her opening service game then breaking her 58th-ranked opponent to seize control and establish a 3-0 lead.
Govortsova managed to recover her serve but Li broke again to take the set.
A wild Li forehand smash on game point handed the Czech an early break in an erratic second set.
The Chinese star immediately bounced back to level, but again threw it away with a sloppy next game to be 2-1 behind.
Govortsova, who has failed to go beyond the second round at Melbourne in six attempts, pulled into a 5-3 lead and the tie looked to be going into three sets before Li knuckled down to claw back four games in a row for victory.
The 30-year-old Li has been in impressive form this year as she searches for her second Grand Slam title, winning the inaugural Shenzhen Open and reaching the semi-finals of the Sydney International.
The plexicushion courts seem to suit her style of play and she made the final at Melbourne Park in 2011, losing to Kim Clijsters, and was a semi-finalist in 2010.
Li was knocked out in the fourth round last year, failing to go beyond that point in any of the Grand Slams, but she has shown progress under Carlos Rodriguez, the former coach of Justine Henin.
- AFP/fa
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff writes a regular column for CNN.com. He is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc.: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back." He is also a digital literacy advocate for Codecademy.com. His forthcoming book is "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now."
(CNN) -- Education is under threat, but the Internet and the growth of Massive Open Online Courses are not to blame.
Like the arts and journalism, whose value may be difficult to measure in dollars, higher education has long been understood as a rather "soft" pursuit. And this has led people to ask fundamental questions it:
What is learning, really? And why does it matter unless, of course, it provides a workplace skill or a license to practice? Is the whole notion of a liberal arts education obsolete or perhaps an overpriced invitation to unemployment?
Douglas Rushkoff
The inability to answer these questions lies at the heart of universities' failure to compete with new online educational offerings -- the rapidly proliferating MOOCs -- as well as the failure of most Web-based schools to provide a valid alternative to the traditional four-year college.
Education is about more than acquiring skills.
When America and other industrialized nations created public schools, it was not to make better workers but happier ones. The ability to read, write and think was seen as a human right and a perquisite to good citizenship, or at least the surest way to guarantee compliant servitude from the workers of industrial society. If even the coal miner could spend some of his time off reading, he stood a chance of living a meaningful life. Moreover, his ability to read the newspaper allowed him to understand the issues the day and to vote intelligently.
What we consider basic knowledge has grown to include science, history, the humanities and economics. So, too, has grown the time required to learn it all. While the modern college might have begun as a kind of finishing school, a way for the sons of the elite to become cultured and find one another before beginning their own careers, it eventually became an extension of public school's mandate. We go to college to become smarter and more critical thinkers while also gaining skills we might need for the work force.
Accordingly, we all wanted our sons and daughters to go to college until recently. The more of us who could afford it, the better we felt we were doing as a society. But the price of education has skyrocketed, especially in the tiny segment of elite schools. This has led to the widespread misperception that a good college education is available only to those willing to take on six-figure debt.
Worse, in making the calculation about whether college is "worth it," we tend to measure the cost of a Harvard education against the market value of the skills acquired. Did my kid learn how to use Excel? If not, what was the point?
To the rescue come the MOOCs, which offer specific courses, a la carte, to anyone with a credit card; some even offer courses for free.
Following the model of University of Phoenix, which began offering a variety of "distance learning" in 1989, these newer Web sites offer video lectures and forums to learn just about anything, in most cases for a few hundred dollars a class. MOOCs have exploded in the past few years, enrolling millions of students and sometimes partnering with major universities.
For pure knowledge acquisition, it's hard to argue against such developments, especially in an era that doesn't prioritize enrichment for its own sake. But it would be a mistake to conclude that online courses fulfill the same role in a person's life as a college education, just as it would be an error to equate four years of high school with some online study and a GED exam.
Don't get me wrong: I have always been a fan of online education -- but with a few important caveats.
First off, subjects tend to be conveyed best in what might be considered their native environments. Computers might not be the best place to simulate a live philosophy seminar, but they are terrific places to teach people how to use and program computers.
Second, and just as important, computers should not require the humans using them to become more robotic. I recently read an account from an online lecturer about how -- unlike in a real classroom -- he had to deliver his online video lectures according to a rigid script, where every action was choreographed. To communicate effectively online, he needed to stop thinking and living in the moment. That's not teaching; it's animatronics.
Online learning needs to cater to human users. A real instructor should not simply dump data on a person, as in a scripted video, but engage with students, consider their responses and offer individualized challenges.
The good, living teacher probes the way students think and offers counterexamples that open pathways. With the benefit of a perfect memory of student's past responses, a computer lesson should also be able to identify some of these patterns and offer up novel challenges at the right time. "How might Marx have responded to that suggestion, Joe?"
Finally, education does not happen in isolation.
Whether it's philosophy students arguing in a dorm about what Hegel meant, or fledgling Java programmers inspecting one another's code, people learn best as part of a cohort. The course material is almost secondary to the engagement. We go to college for the people.
Likewise, the best of MOOCs should be able bring together ideal, heterogeneous groupings of students based on their profiles and past performance, and also create ample opportunities for them to engage with one another in the spirit of learning.
Perhaps this spirit of mutual aid is what built the Internet in the first place. Now that this massive collaborative learning project has succeeded, it would be a shame if we used it to take the humanity out of learning altogether.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Douglas Rushkoff.
FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2012, file photo, a man walks with his dog to a National Guard vehicle after leaving his flooded home at the Metropolitan Trailer Park in Moonachie, N.J., in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. The storm drove New York and New Jersey residents from their homes, destroyed belongings and forced them to find shelter for themselves - and for their pets, said owners, who recounted tales of a dog swimming through flooded streets and extra food left behind for a tarantula no one was willing to take in. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File) / Craig Ruttle
The House of Representatives today passed a $50.7 billion bill to provide funds for Hurricane Sandy relief as well as other natural disasters. The vote was 241 to 180, with 179 Republicans and one Democrat voting no.
The bill will now move to the Senate, where it is expected to be passed by lawmakers after the new session begins on January 22, though it's possible it could be passed by voice vote this week. It is then expected to be quickly signed into law by President Obama.
The package was divided into two parts: A $17 billion bill for immediate recovery from Sandy, and another $33.7 billion amendment for long-term recovery and investment to limit the damage from similar events in the future. The October storm is believed to be responsible for 140 deaths and billions of dollars in damage centered in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and knocked out transit systems and power grids.
The package provides more than $16 billion for the New York and New Jersey transit systems as well as more $16 billion for Housing and Urban Development funding for recovery from Sandy and other disasters. Other funding goes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief aid fund and to Army Corps of Engineers projects to limit future damage. Funding is also authorized for repairs by the Coast Guard, Federal Highway Administration and Veterans Affairs Department.
Lawmakers from the Northeast criticized southern Republican lawmakers who had sought to reduce the size of the package or require that funding be offset with an across the board cut to discretionary spending. An amendment from Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., that would have offset the funding with spending cuts failed 162 yeas to 258 nays earlier in the day, and the Republican-led House Rules Committee blocked efforts to reduce the size of the package.
"We are asking, we are pleading and we shouldn't have to beg for money for the Northeast, to be able to survive this tragedy that hit us," said Rep. Rosa Delauro, D-Conn., who added: "I might remind my colleague from Louisiana that between Rita, Wilma and Katrina, this institution appropriated $133.9 billion in disaster relief."
Critics of the bill derided it as "an excuse for a grab-bag of spending, having nothing to do with emergency relief," in the words of Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.
The Senate passed a $60 billion Sandy relief bill before the end of the last Congress, but House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, declined to schedule a House vote on that measure in the wake of the contentious vote on "fiscal cliff" legislation. That decision prompted harsh criticism from northeastern lawmakers, including Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., forcing Boehner to hastily schedule today's vote in addition to $9.7 billion in flood relief that was passed Jan. 4.
Jan 16, 2013 12:04am
As the White House prepares to unveil a sweeping plan aimed at curbing gun violence, the National Rifle Association has launched a preemptive, personal attack on President Obama, calling him an “elitist hypocrite” who, the group claims, is putting American children at risk.
In 35-second video posted online Tuesday night, the NRA criticizes Obama for accepting armed Secret Service protection for his daughters, Sasha and Malia, at their private Washington, D.C., school while questioning the placement of similar security at other schools.
“Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?” the narrator says.
“Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security,” it continues. “Protection for their kids and gun-free zones for ours.”
The immediate family members of U.S. presidents – generally considered potential targets – have long received Secret Service protection.
The ad appeared on a new website for a NRA advocacy campaign – “NRA Stand and Fight” — that the gun-rights group appears poised to launch in response to Obama’s package of gun control proposals that will be announced today.
It’s unclear whether the video will air on TV or only on the web. The NRA did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment. The domain for the website is registered to Ackerman McQueen, the NRA’s long-standing public relations firm.
The White House had no comment on the NRA ad.
In the wake of last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Obama administration has met with a cross-section of advocacy groups on all sides of the gun debate to formulate new policy proposals.
The NRA, which met with Vice President Joe Biden last week, has opposed any new legislative gun restrictions, including expanded background checks and limits on the sale of assault-style weapons, instead calling for armed guards at all American schools.
Obama publicly questioned that approach in an interview with “Meet the Press” earlier this month, saying, “I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.”
Still, the White House has been considering a call for increased funding for police officers at public schools and the proposal could be part of a broader Obama gun policy package.
Fifty-five percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they support adding armed guards at schools across the country.
“The issue is, are there some sensible steps that we can take to make sure that somebody like the individual in Newtown can’t walk into a school and gun down a bunch of children in a shockingly rapid fashion. And surely, we can do something about that,” Obama said at a news conference on Monday.
“Responsible gun owners, people who have a gun for protection, for hunting, for sportsmanship, they don’t have anything to worry about,” he said.
ABC News’ Mary Bruce and Jay Shaylor contributed reporting.
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