The head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, finally broke the group's silence today one week after the horrible shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. After earlier stating that the NRA would join in a constructive debate about gun control, he instead doubled down and proposed the stupidest, most nonsensical, idiotic idea about how to protect citizens of any age from being a victim in a mass shooting that he could possibly have come up with.
Mr. LaPierre actually suggested that the "only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." He actually said that. Here's his proposition: that every school in America hire an armed guard. No kidding. There's so much wrong with this moronic idea I don't hardly know how to begin. But let's just, for the sake of argument, think about what would have happened had there been an armed guard with a Glock or something in Sandy Hook Elementary. The shooter, Adam Lanza, would have just laughed before he shot and killed him. "I'll meet that Glock and raise you a Sig Sauer and a Bushmaster assault rifle, dude!" Yeah, that would be a great plan. Not to mention, where would the money be found to hire such guards, and who would be crazy (or suicidal) enough to take the job? What if the shooter has a bulletproof vest, making the guard's gun about as worthless as a marshmallow on a stick?
I don't happen to believe that children's lives are worth more than adults', but it does seem so much more sad that so many first-graders were killed in such a horrific way. But Mr. LaPierre, whose elevator apparently doesn't go all the way to the top, forgets one thing... children don't just go to school. They go to McDonald's, Chuck E. Cheese, the mall, the grocery store, the hair salon.... does Mr. LaPierre think every business in America should hire these armed guards? Does he really want to turn America into an armed camp? And who's to say that the people packing these guns know what they're doing or that they won't flip and do the same thing Adam Lanza did?
The deaths of these children and the adult teachers and administrators who died with them should lead us to some sane laws, starting with an assault weapons ban. If the assault weapons ban had still been in place and Nancy Lanza had been unable to legally buy that assault rifle, some of those people would be alive today. The coroner's report showed that all the children who died had been shot more than once.
I'm not completely against having a gun in your home for protection, and I wouldn't want a ban on hunting rifles either although I think killing animals and calling it "fun" and a "sport" is frankly sick. But we can make some common sense changes, such as banning the sale of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, requiring a criminal background check for every weapon sale, and closing the gun show loophole.
There was a survey recently that said 70+% of NRA members wanted at least some of these changes. If they really feel this way, what they need to do is dump their NRA membership immediately. Don't give this organization, now run by people who are just, to use a technical term, fruitcakes, one more red cent. It's time for the NRA to become completely and totally irrelevant in America.
If your Congressman or Senator continues to follow the NRA's orders, you should vote him or her out of office as soon as possible or recall them immediately. We need to make sure our representatives make decisions about laws that make common sense, and not blindly follow an organization who has not only outlived its usefulness, but is led by extremists who can't even see what's so blindingly obvious to the rest of us.
