The NRA's Press Statement

They called it a “press conference” but NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre read a statement (pdf) and then left.

The big takeaway people are talking about is the NRA’s call to have a cop in every school. I’ll get to that in a moment but first I want to run through a couple of the statements that I found to be problematic.

And here's another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm,
Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one:
it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come
my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or
didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?

Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like "American Psycho"
and "Natural Born Killers" that are aired like propaganda loops on
"Splatterdays" and every day, and a thousand music videos that
portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have
the nerve to call it "entertainment."

But is that what it really is? Isn't fantasizing about killing people as a
way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one
another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized
society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and
criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of
every month of every year.

So guns don’t kill people, video games and movies do?

The NRA has rightly fought back against the notion that guns and not people are the problem. To see them try and shift blame and undercut the logic of their own argument is disappointing and beneath them.

It’s always easy to say, “don’t take away my freedom, take away the other guy’s” but we shouldn’t even entertain ideas like that. It’s stupid when liberals set up a choice between 1st and 2nd Amendment rights and it’s not any better when the NRA does it.

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.

Bull. Again he’s talking about TV, movies and video games. Aside from the fact that not all fictional violence is equal (a slasher movie and say the deaths in Band of Brothers serve very different purposes), fictional violence is…fictional.

Once again, the NRA is simply resorting to the same cheap, emotional tactics we loathe from the left (remember it was Tipper Gore who waged a campaign against the music industry).

Are imagines of violence prevalent in our society? Of course. But who is the proper guardian of what children see, the government or parents?

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection.

There’s no such thing as “absolute protection”. Again, this is the kind of cheap, lazy argument we’d bash liberals for, it’s no more attractive coming from someone on “our” side.

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

What could go wrong will urging the federal government to “act immediately” and to spend whatever is necessary on a project without any time to consider options or the ramifications? The last time we did something in such a knee jerk fashion we got the TSA. How’s that working out for you?

And why is this a federal responsibility or mandate? Shouldn’t these kind of decisions be made at the local school board and community level? How is massive, thoughtless, rushed action a good idea?

There'll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, this is the day for decisive action.

Again, how is this a good way to make policy? Oh and you know who would agree with the sentiment if not the proposed policy? Gun grabbers. They’d love to act first and debate later.

As for the NRA’s main idea, cops in every school, it’s an incredible waste of resources.

The Sandy Hook School in Newtown, CT was established in 1956. What would a cop have been doing for the last 56 years? Now multiply that by tens of thousands of schools that have not and will not experience a shooting incident.

One reason that the shootings in places like LA and Chicago don’t make much news and Newtown does it what happened at Newtown is exceedingly rare.

Far more children die crossing the street than at the hand of a gunman in a school. Should we have crossing guards on every street in the nation?

And yes, we have armed guards at all sorts of places, the Capitol, Court Houses, the Holocaust Museum. But those places are all identifiable targets. The overwhelming majority of schools (the proverbial 99.99999%) simply aren't.

Should some schools have cops stationed at them? Absolutely and they do. School Resource Officers do amazing work but they simply aren’t needed in every school house all the time. If a locality or a district wants to have cops in schools, nothing is stopping them from doing that. That doesn't translate into a national mandate to have them or change the cost/benefit analysis.

About all the NRA had going for it today is the idiocy of their opponents.

I’m not sure why the NRA felt the need to talk about this at all. Yes, the media has been hitting them but the media always hits them. The important thing to remember is the media is full of idiots. You don’t see AAA holding a press event when a car is used in a crime.

But if you are going to hold an event and make national news, you should make a strong case for yourself and your cause. I think the NRA has one, they just didn’t make it today.

posted by DrewM. at 02:45 PM

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