BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Obama was absolutely correct when he told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that "there will be resistance" to his extremist proposal to ban the most commonly-owned and popular rifles in America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

"We will be on the front lines of that resistance," vowed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb.

The president gave an exclusive interview to "Meet the Press" during which he said that he will put his "full weight" behind the gun ban effort, and that he would like to accomplish this ban during the first year of his second term, meaning sometime in 2013. Mr. Obama also said he will "call all the stakeholders together."

"We're still waiting for his telephone call," Gottlieb said. "He has insisted that he will talk to anybody. If the discussion is all about penalizing honest gun owners, banning guns and eroding the Second Amendment, it's going to be an awfully short conversation."

Fears of a looming gun ban have caused sales of modern sporting rifles and standard capacity magazines to skyrocket.

"The guns that President Obama and Capitol Hill gun grabbers don't want the people to have," Gottlieb observed, "are the ones people are buying by the bushel. Criminals won't turn them in, so why should law-abiding gun owners be expected to do that?

"Mr. Obama admitted that he has historically supported banning semi-autos and magazines," he noted. "His philosophy is to focus on an object when we should focus on perpetrators and the horrible pattern of violence that has resulted from the creation of so-called 'gun-free' zones. Gun-free zones and gun bans only disarm victims and create risk-free conditions for criminals and crazies.

"You cannot have an honest discussion about violence without addressing conditions that make it easy for criminals," Gottlieb concluded. "You can't keep people truly safe by giving them the illusion of safety. You do not stop criminals by penalizing law-abiding citizens and demonizing their firearms."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

SOURCE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms