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(CNN) - The US National Rifle Association (NRA) on Wednesday criticized the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for declaring the NRA as a "national terrorist organization," calling the vote "useless and unpleasant."
The resolution, which was passed unanimously on Tuesday night, states that the NRA "promotes extremist positions," "spreads propaganda" to deceive the American public about armed violence, encourages gun owners to "acts of violence." and "has armed those individuals who have committed acts of terrorism."
NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter called the resolution a "useless and unpleasant remedy statement for the epidemic of violence that affects our nation."
"This is a reckless attack against a law-abiding organization, its members and the freedoms everyone defends," Hunter said in a statement sent to CNN.
The resolution is largely symbolic. He calls for the city and the county to "take all reasonable steps to limit" the "financial and contractual relations" of San Francisco with vendors doing business with the NRA. But the resolution, for example, does not carry the police implications of the designation as a foreign terrorist organization.
Despite the increase in cases that the police describe as related to internal terrorism, there is no federal charge for "internal terrorism." The United States does not have an internal terrorism law and no government agency designates national groups as terrorist organizations. That means that many cases that the FBI calls related to internal terrorism end up with a variety of charges for violations of laws related to firearms or even other state charges.
The resolution was filed in July after a shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California killed three people. The reprimand of the organization that defends the right to bear arms, which vehemently opposes stricter arms legislation, was approved Tuesday at a meeting after the supervisors returned from a legislative break.
"This country is terrified of armed violence, and we must call the NRA what it is: an internal terrorist organization," Catherine Stefani, a 11-member board member who proposed the resolution, said in a press release. "No one has done more to fan the flames of armed violence than the NRA."
"Every country in the world has video games, movies and mental health problems, and yet only the United States has armed violence in elementary schools, in movies and at Walmart," said Stefani. “The difference is the weapons. No other country has so many assault rifles in its streets. ”
The unanimous vote comes when a series of mass shootings has shaken the nation. In August, the shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, occurred hours apart and 31 people died. On Saturday, at least seven people died in a mass shooting in western Texas.
After the shootings in Dayton and El Paso, President Donald Trump expressed his openness to the expansion of background checks, but revoked under pressure from arms lobbying. NRA chief Wayne LaPierre told Trump in talks after the shootings that the NRA does not believe that calls for more restrictive weapons measures in Washington match what his supporters in deeply Republican areas feel about the issue. a person familiar with the talks told CNN.
Trump has not been clear on what kind of measures he would support, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has continued to block the arms measures approved by the House of Democratic Representatives that have bipartisan support in the Capitol. Among them are the HR8 project, which requires background checks on all sales of firearms in the country; and HR112, which closes a legal vacuum in the current law that allows some firearms traffickers to transfer some firearms before completing the required background checks.
McConnell has said he will not put any arms control measures on the Senate floor without Trump's guarantee that he will sign them.
The measure also occurs amid an exodus of leadership and other signs of confusion in the NRA. The group faces intense scrutiny of its finances, is involved in a legal battle with its former advertising agency and is dealing with growing criticism in the wake of recent mass shootings. In April, the then president of the NRA, Oliver North, was expelled after a dispute with LaPierre.
CNN's Sarah Moon, Geneva Sands and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this news.