WASHINGTON | The nation’s largest gun-rights lobby called Friday for armed police officers to be posted in every American school to stop the next killer “waiting in the wings.”
The National Rifle Association broke its silence on last week’s shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 children and staff dead.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the group’s top lobbyist, Wayne LaPierre, said at a Washington news conference.
LaPierre said “the next Adam Lanza,” the man responsible for last week’s mayhem, is planning an attack on another school.
“How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark,” LaPierre said. “A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”
He blamed video games, movies and music videos for exposing children to a violent culture day in and day out. “In a race to the bottom, many conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society, by bringing an even more toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty right into our homes,” LaPierre said.
He refused to take any questions after speaking. Though security was tight, two protesters were able to interrupt LaPierre’s speech, holding up signs that blamed the NRA for killing children. Both were escorted out, shouting that guns in schools are not the answer.
LaPierre announced that former Rep. Asa Hutchison, R-Ark., will lead an NRA program that will develop a model security plan for schools that relies on armed volunteers.
The 4.3 million-member NRA largely disappeared from public debate after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., choosing atypical silence as a strategy as the nation sought answers after the rampage. The NRA temporarily took down its Facebook page and kept quiet on Twitter.
Since the slayings, President Barack Obama has demanded “real action, right now” against U.S. gun violence and called on the NRA to join the effort. Moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms, the president said this week he wants proposals to reduce gun violence that he can take to Congress by January.
Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would stop people from purchasing firearms from private sellers without a background check. Obama also has indicated he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines.
Almost certainly there are evil, sick, but devious persons out there who will strike again and catch us off guard. These types tend to go after soft targets, where resistance is low and targets are defenseless.
Do guns kill people? Do people kill people? It takes both to be as ruthless as the CT shooter. He had a high-capacity, high-rate-of-fire, high-kinetic-enrergy weapon. Yes, he could have still been deadly with his twin pistols, but the victims would have not been as many and not killed in such a short time.
In 1925, you could buy a Thompson submachine gun for $175 from the Sears catalog and have it shipped straight to your home, no questions asked, no forms filled out. We managed to restrict the ownership of fully automatic weapons without removing the Second Amendment. Clearly we can curb the availability of paramilitary antipersonnel weapons if we choose to.
We cannot eliminate the evil acts of depraved minds, but we can make it more difficult to acquire such lethally efficient killing machines as the .223 Bushmaster. Until I see evidence that deer and elk are forming “a well-regulated militia” of their own, hunters don’t need paramilitary style assault weapons.