The #NRAPresser
Here’s what NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said today, in the most whiny, self-indulgent, passive-aggressive non-press conference I’ve ever seen. The ways in which it was disrespectful to the victims of the Newtown massacre are many.
Transcript PDFhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/117619075/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-1qlf15l70x1znkrwrkl1
Buzzfeed has provided a handy list of everything LaPierre blamed the Newtown shootings on. Hint: None of them are “Adam” “Lanza” or “gun”. At the conclusion of this “press conference”, LaPierre took no questions.
America’s response:
I think their computer’s italics key is probably now broken…
I expected at least a passing comment on the glamour of getting off 30 rounds in under 30 seconds in a fifty-foot kill radius; and how arming our teachers with equivalent countermeasures is a positive step to reducing gun violence. I’m disappointed.
That wasn’t a press conference, Alan. That was a frakking INFOMERCIAL! I don’t know of any press conference where the person at the podium doesn’t take any questions.
And it should permanently disqualify them from ANY discussion on how to solve the gun problem. (Yes, NRA, we have one-whether you want to admit it or not.)
Dude didn’t study his Hohfeldian elements. If you have a right, it means you may or may not, if you have a duty it means you must. The “not just…but” construction means that something stronger will follow, but a right is less restrictive on the right-holder than is a duty on the duty-holder (heh). WHAT AN IDIOT.
Newtown was horrible, of course, but let’s remember that it was a very rare event. We should not overreact to it.
The “shoebomber” tried to down an aircraft and the nation overreacted to it. We banned liquids on planes and eleven years later millions of travelers are still forced to remove their shoes before boarding.
In the Daily Beast, Megan McArdle argues in an exhaustive analysis, that there’s nothing we can do to prevent another attack. I agree. Her piece is here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/17/there-s-little-we-can-do-to-prevent-another-massacre.html
We learn that approx 1/3 of our schools already employ armed guards. I’m not a member of the NRA and no fan of Mr. LaPiere but he was demonized for saying that when you phone 911 for help, the good guys coming running packing guns. That’s undeniable.
Only a moron would put a sign in front of his home announcing “Gun Free Home”, or a sign reading “No Alarm System Installed”. Why on earth should we trumpet about ‘gun free zones”? LaPierre is right. I don’t like the guy, but he’s right.
And he’s right about the mental states of mass murderers: They’re all nuts. Somehow they slipped through the crack of our make-believe mental health screening system. Maybe Obamacare should be expanded to accommodate…..you know. This is about mental health, not certain brand of guns.
Finally, about these super powerful assault rifles. Did you know they’re not high powered, but rather low powered? In the power charts they rank near the bottom. I can name 50 other common hunting cartridges that are TWICE as powerful as the .223 or the 7.63×39 (AR15 and AK)
The country is frantic with misinformation, anger, shock and a rush to judgement. It’s not a good time to make rash judgements.
Megan McArdle’s piece is nothing more than her usual schtick of saying that “Gee whiz, this issue is kinda complicated so basically we shouldn’t do anything but let the Magic Free Market handle it!”, which is basically her answer to any issue of any import whatsoever. Trust me, I’ve been reading her for years. Her article stinks of stupid WAY before you get to the end, where she takes her train wreck of an argument and plows it into a tire fire by indicating that we should train kids to charge gun-wielding attackers. The “We can’t prevent it!” people have no compelling answers as to how it is that a TON of other countries around the world, demographically all very similar to the US, somehow DO manage to make these kinds of attacks spectacularly rare in their borders, while we just throw up our hands and say things like “Well you can kill someone with a kitchen knife so guns that fire 30+ rounds without reloading are totally the same thing.”
And I love her indication that shoddy thinking led to the Iraq War, someplace in the middle of the article. She was singing a rather different tune about going into Iraq when she was first making her waves as a blogger known as “Jane Galt” ten years ago.
I didn’t read her article with any preconceived notions. I took each point on its merits. I think her argument were sound.
“We learn that approx 1/3 of our schools already employ armed guards. ”
Columbine High school had armed guards during the massacre in 1999.
I love how an organization that scares it members by repeatedly predicting that jackbooted government thugs will eventually try to take their guns now wants armed government employees in schools.