| I tuned in to this morning's press conference by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA a couple of minutes later. A couple of minutes after that I, someone who generally doesn't regard gun control very highly, was shaking at rage at the incredibly tone deaf, stupid shit he was saying. Nancy Kaffer of the Freep sums it up well. In a 30-minute conference, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre blamed the nation's mass shootings to the media, violent movies and video games, and advocated for demonization of the mentally ill. He also posed what he apparently presumes to be a provocative question: Do we value our children enough to place armed guards in each of the nation's 99,000 public schools, whatever the cost may be?
That cost, by the way, would be borne by the American taxpayers. The beneficiaries of that program would be the NRA, which would train the would-be rent-a-cops that keep the kiddos safe in school. In other words, Wayne LaPierre's approach to Sandy Hook was something that would financially benefit the NRA. There aren't words to describe how crass, stupid and offensive that is. This is beyond the fact that I have a child and have no interest whatsoever in seeing him have to arrive every day to an armed campus to learn. And, by the way, I'm not the first to point out that there was an armed guard present at Columbine ... the problem is that he was outgunned by the shooters, as will always be the case. Or the cost. What you heard today was the NRA saying that it was happy to make everyone in the country pay through the nose for safe schools except the NRA. The NRA sees a business opportunity in the Sandy Hook massacre. |
