The National Rifle Association, quite conspicuously, said literally nothing in the wake of last week's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary at Newtown, Conn. Instead, the group very carefully took its time, crafted a specific message to present to the public, which would present the NRA and its vision in the best possible light.
And this train wreck is what the group came up with.
To call this a press conference is to mislabel what transpired. The NRA's Wayne LaPierre decided to give a speech, and the group refused at the outset to consider questions from the reporters that had been invited to the event.
It went downhill from there. It was hard to tell at times whether LaPierre was serious or had become a spectacular performance artist, making a dramatic statement about the absurdity of the NRA's increasingly twisted worldview.
Regardless, his performance is worth watching, if only to marvel at its farcical qualities, but don't brush past the substance of his message. As LaPierre sees it, there's a very long list of culprits that bear responsibility for gun violence -- but guns have no place on that list.
The NRA leader this morning blamed gun-free school zones, the media, the entertainment industry, video games, music he doesn't like, existing gun-control laws, and President Obama as all sharing collective responsibility for tragic violence. Guns, however, are fine.
LaPierre was willing to call for a new national database. Of firearms? No. Of gun owners? No. What the NRA wants instead is a new national database of Americans with mental illness.
This was a public-relations fiasco that only John Boehner can properly relate to.
But let's pay special attention to LaPierre's most important policy proposal.
As the NRA leader sees it, the only proper solution to "a bad guy with a gun" is ... wait for it ... "a good guy with a gun." With that in mind, LaPierre's big new idea is armed guards at every school in the United States.
No, seriously, that's what he wants.
Of course, school campuses can be awfully large, and the guards can't be posted at every entrance, so I'm not sure why the NRA isn't also suggesting armed guards be assigned to every student in every school.
Indeed, massacres aren't limited to schools, so it stands to reason that the nation will also need armed guards "deployed" -- a word LaPierre used in his speech -- to movie theaters, shopping malls, and houses of worship.
And what happens when people go home? People are sometimes shot by criminals in their own house, which suggest we'll need armed guards at all U.S. homes, too.
You get the point.
Honestly, it seemed like LaPierre was going out of his way to alienate even people who might be skeptical about new gun laws and sympathetic to his arguments. Gun-control advocates shouldn't have been annoyed by the NRA's public-relations disaster, they should have been thrilled.
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Armed guards for the NRA building. Facing in.
Disappointed…
I was expecting more from LaPierre, not more of the usual gibberish.
Where was the conspiracy theory about Obama’s CIA operatives directing microwaves into the shooter's brain, thus controlling his actions so Obama would have the excuse he needed to call in the jackbooted UN thugs to kick in our doors and confiscate our weapons?
Hell, LaPierre didn’t even try to make the socialist floride-in-our-water-to-make-us-pacifists-so-we'll-willingly-submit-to-U.N.-detention-camp connection. WTF?
I mean, he didn’t even mention the president’s birth certificate.
I’m done. The NRA can kiss red, white and blue American ass before they get any more of my annual dues.
So what the NRA wants is us to create and live in a 'Mad Max world. Great!
10 year olds are required to have guns in the zombie movie Fido, and everyone distrusts old people..
I suggest that all those who want to live in a country where the citizens have to go armed move to Syria or the Congo or Libya.
I am glad I have no children or grandchildren. If I did and their school were to add armed guards and armed teachers, I would have to take them out of school and home school them. Not only is there no assurance that the armed guards or a teacher would not go off the deep end and use the guns against one another or against a perfectly innocent person (cf. Travon Martin), but just seeing the image of armed guards everyday does not say much about our society.
I didn't read all 79 comments before mine; but, has anyone thought about how many guns this would sell? Gun manufacturers must LOVE this idea. The thought of school districts using taxpayer dollars to buy guns is unthinkable to me.
The Emperor (NRA) has no clothes. If enough of our leaders will stand up to them, the myth of the NRA's power will be dispelled once and for all.
An armed guard in every school! What kind of a horrible message does that send? What kind of a country is this? How this can make kids feel safer is beyond me. Is this going to be one of those countries that has the military patrolling the streets? Is this the kind of country we want?
Please make sure Rachel or Lawrence reads this. I believe they'll understand we have a much bigger problem here than "a circus clown". Thank you.
NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre suggested that we arm each school with an NRA trained police (not just any armed police or guard). If that doesn’t send up red flags to anyone interested in Holocaust history, they might want to rethink those red flags.
Indoctrinating the German youth into the Nazi Youth Party was one of the most integral part of their program to make it work. How long do you think it will take before each NRA Guard decides it’s time to recruit Jr. Guards? Brown shirts? Maybe not in brown shirts as that would be too transparent as to what they are trying to do.
And how long will it take for indoctrinated children to turn against their parents because they do not own a gun (or a lot of guns and semi-automatics at that)? Not long.
And for the NRA its win-win anyway. Most their members are so brainwashed, they think anything Mr. LaPierre says is manna from heaven.
If the Obama administration says “Not no but hell no” (and of course they will if they have any sense at all), the NRA will say, “What we have here is a case of good guys with guns (us) vs. bad guys with guns “The Government” hence a “Musket Revolution” but now we have semi-automatics (easily converted to an automatic with a $100 piece). We have extended clips. We are at war with our tyrannical government”.
Someone in the government better get this rogue crazed fringe NRA group off the air and into safe rooms with padded walls so they don’t destroy themselves, us, our government and our nation.
Someone commented on the NYT that maybe someone should call Mr. Lapierre's bluff and suggest a huge gun tax to fund a policeman in every school.....I don't think any gun owner would approve of that!!
But what a salesman!!
I hope someone technologically savvy will put this speech on YouTube..but include it with cut ins of an audience of cartoon characters.......by the way, is Yosemity Sam a good guy or a bad guy?
The NRA is about 20 minutes from my home, whenever I whiz by on the highway, I feel ill, the NRA logo is quite prominent. If it crumbled to the ground some wee hour of the morning, that would improve the landscape considerably. Not likely. In the meantime in Fairfax County, Va. where the NRA resides, dogs must be licensed yearly, ten bucks a year, they have to be up to date on their rabies shots and that must be documented.
Wayne La Pierre has been a hate filled radical for years, his performance was no surprise to most, his lack of real empathy or fake empathy for that matter,reflects his cold, cold heart.
All the NRA and their allies, the gun & ammunition manufacturers, see is a enormous, brand new market.
So is the NRA going to foot the bill to put a officer of the law in every school around our country. I highly doubt it. I think the schools could use more teachers instead of guns. Maybe that would help with gun violence and violence in general.
Life according to the right:
Sorry, there's no money for extra security or teachers. BTW, we need to cut staff and budget.
Teachers jobs have become as dangerous as law enforcement. BTW, we've just passed laws to gut their unions.
We don't have time to legislate protection of your children, we're too busy working to protect zygots. BTW, since we won't pay for your contraception, just have more kids.
And all those billions of dollars we wasted to buy a presidency was extra profit. BTW, we demand less taxes on the wealthy. 2014 is coming and we need to Take
OverBack America.As I am tired of the right telling us of their secret policies for fix'n stuff.
And after watching some talking head on TV say that the definition of assault gun is three pages long.
As I would like to socialize some banks, health care, higher education,, I would like to offer the starting point for "lefties" "hard on crime":
3 bullet capacities for rifles, 6 bullet capacity for hand-guns,
rapists get life in prison
felons get tracking chips for 10 years past crime
public libel/lying get 100X $ damages charged against perp
driver's license requires hard test
mental health care? beyond an empasis for everyone's social integration (friends) any psychotic episode of violence would then require monitored care? I don't know that these mental health care ideas would have changed the Sandy Hook...
If we are going to prevent the mentally ill to have access to guns, I think we should start with LaPierre. He is clearly mentally ill and therefore, should not have the right to own, buy or even speak about guns!
NRA forgot to add the "reality" TV shows in their speech - the ones that are dehumanizing, ridiculing, disrespectful and flat out humiliate the contestants that are trying there best (or best to be the worst). These shows only bring people down - and the wide spread popularity of them coincides with the additional violence in America. These shows are passed off as "REALITY" - not fantasy as other shows.
That which deals the permanancy of death does not need gray-area legislation.
How do we classify mentally ill. How do we classify good guy? When multiple guns are drawn, is the one who gets shot automatically going to be the bad guy?
Look at the confusion over whether to arrest neighborhood watch enthusiest George Zimmerman who was "protecting" his gated community from Skittle bearing teens. Stand Your Ground is gray-area legislation already on the books. How well does that work.
Gun control is not longer a gray area, now that it's come down to the mass murder of toddlers.
Hahahahaha! If it weren't so pathetic it would be funny! This puts him right up there with Bachmann and West- certifiably nuts! The idea of having armed guards on every campus in America? Does he have any idea what that would entail? No, obviously not. He's too insane to even think about it.
It's as if the idea of keeping the bad guys from GETTING a gun isn't even within the realm of possibility in his universe. WTF? This worldview is simply incomprehensible to me. What a twisted little man!
I live in Buffalo, NY and enjoy many of the exports our neighbors to the north share with us -- Labatt's, hockey, the concept of socialized medicine, cheap prescription drugs, etc. I also know Canadian and American customs officers at our international bridges stop many products at our borders. But I didn't know violent video games and gun-ridden Hollywood movies weren't allowed in Canada. Because if they were how does Mr. LaPierre explain the fact (as reported by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) that the annual rate of firearm homicides in Canada is 183. 183 a year! Not a week, a year. Canadian law requires every gun owner complete a Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) before they are allowed to buy a gun. The waiting period in Canada is 28 days -- because a thorough background check cannot be completed any faster. Most military-style guns are prohibited. As of 1991 FAC applicants are also required to complete a gun safety course during the 28-day waiting period before they can purchase their gun. Along the lines of the legislation proposed by Sen. Feinstein and others, Canada has restricted ownership of high-capacity magazines: limiting handguns to ten rounds, and most semi-automatic center-fire rifles to five rounds. As a nation they also discuss and address the need for serious mental health care -- covered cost-free or low-cost in their socialized (no, it's not a dirty word) health care system. We are doing something terribly, terribly wrong -- and Canada is doing it so much better. (And it's not giving more guns to the "good guys," Mr. LaPierre.)
XLNT!!
I've GOT IT!!! Let's just have one GIANT database of "GOOD GUYS" and "BAD GUYS" and just don't allow the "BAD GUYS" to have guns!! Simple!
HOW OUTRAGEOUS ......THE NRA are A$$HOLES all they care about is THEMSELVES and THAT GUN .......no matter who IT KILLS .......they need to be REMOVED they have too much POWER
Just resign and feel like a moral person once more. They are the problem. They are owned by gun companies who are moral failures for putting these weapons and Super load mags out on the street. Just resign and be part of 74% of you who disagree with them, just resign and see what they say about that.
I can't believe this was the NRA response to this horrific act. I've heard and read there are some elected officials (especially republicans) that were waiting for the NRA response before commenting. How can they in good conscience condone such a crazy suggestion?
The government already has huge debt issues and the reponse is to appropriate more funds for armed guards at every school in the country? Where are all these billions of yearly expenditures coming from?
If D. Gregory doesn't embarrass this clown on MTP this Sunday, he shouldn't be host of that program. LaPierre should be made to explain this logic face-to-face with the families still grieving from this tragedy. *SMH*
This "press conference" did not surprise me in the least. I fully expected Mr. LaPierre to come out and continue to defend the policies that enable the massacre of our children. The idea that he has a broad base of support for such policies and their outcome saddens me.
The nra's solution to secondhand smoke is give everybody a pack of cigarettes, problem sovle.
My question: Constitutional lawyers and Constitutional intellects, the second amendment has been twisted and perverted. Why are you not out there setting the second amendment straight? The second amendment does not mean anyone can own a semi or automatic weapon of war does it? The second amendment does not mean you can intimidate your fellow citizens. The second amendment does not mean that we dump the rest of the Constitution to favor anarchy does it? The second amendment does not mean we become a giant militia does it?
Please someone take a look at the second amendment!
second amendment says "well regulated"