Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:40 am
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre held a presser regarding the NRA’s position on gun control in response to the massacre of children and adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown. His solution sounded more like a marketing strategy for the manufacturers on the board of the NRA than a sane policy position.
LaPierre thinks congress should immediately provide armed police in our schools, because there’s no tragedy that can’t be used to generate more taxpayer funded profits for his corporate masters. He floated this absurdity, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
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Yes, LaPierre’s solution is that there are “good guys” and “bad guys” and the way we protect our children is for the already under-funded public schools so demonized by his Party to pay for an armed police officer in schools and for a national database of the “mentally ill”, while avoiding a national database of gun owners.
Who will pay for these police officers and the weapons they’ll be needing? Oh, that’s right. The taxpayers. I was waiting for LaPierre to admit his reverse-socialized profit scheme, and just come out and say that the NRA’s board members should get the government contract to supply arms to our schools. Oh, wait. The statement included an offer to help train those officers:
Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now. And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.
Our training programs are the most advanced in the world. That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now. We did it for the nation’s defense industries and military installations during World War II, and we’ll do it for our schools today.
The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.
So, yes, it appears as if the NRA is calling for more of your tax money to fund their profits via their “National School Shield Emergency Response Program.” The solution is to give the NRA board members (two of which are gun manufacturers) a government contract, because they are such great citizens and worthy of our money, whereas teachers aren’t.
It’s not like they don’t make enough money in our bloated defense budget. No. They must profit off of our schools, where we are told we can’t afford to pay our teachers.
Code Pink was there to protest the NRA, and naturally LaPierre refused to answer any questions because the NRA doesn’t do dialogue. They can’t afford to permit dialogue. In order to shut down any attempt at discussion on gun control, he took aim at those who “politicized” the tragic events in Connecticut. By this he means that anyone who seeks to mitigate the problem of massacre by assault weapon is guilty of “politicizing”, whereas his call for more profits and less responsibility is just good citizenship.
Logic tells us that after 9/11 we immediately jumped into solution and prevention mode, because that is what people who are not brain dead or brainwashed do after a horrible tragedy. We know we can’t solve all of the problems, but we seek to mitigate their occurence as best as we can. We seek to do our best to provide a safer country for our children.
LaPierre’s argument of “good guys” and “bad guys” and blaming the media, video games and movies for the NRA’s relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of Americans’ safety will appeal to the simple-minded fearful bunch — aka, the Fox News conservatives. But it will fail to move anyone with two brain cells to rub together because it’s as transparent as it is pathetic.
When looking for “bad guys”, do we only blame the mentally ill for taking advantage of a readily available weapon of mass destruction, or at some point after repeated incidents, do we also blame the manufacturers pushing to make those weapons available to anyone, no matter what, with no accountability and no responsibility?
Wayne LaPierre wants Big Government for the mentally ill, and no government for the corporations he represents. Big shocker. Any regulation of his corporate masters is evil, but the massacre of innocent Americans is to be blamed on video games and promptly ignored after harvesting for profit.
Notice how no matter what, the NRA never takes any responsibility for America’s obscene levels of gun violence. It’s always someone else’s fault and the solution is never to look at the unfathomable destruction an assault weapon is capable of, but rather to use the taxpayers’ money to create a need for MORE weapons.
We’ve found the “bad guys”, and they’re not going to be stopped by armed police in our schools, if indeed that is our vision for American children.
Image: cropped version of Getty Images photo
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