NRA Proves It's A Front for Gun Manufacturers

I previously did a post on who funds the National Rifle Association ("NRA") here which has garnered a good deal of traffic.  In the post, the data documented that the real financial backers of the NRA are gun manufacturers, not individual NRA members who are trotted out like simpleton puppets whenever the utterly dishonest leadership of the organization senses an increased demand for rational gun control laws.  Yesterday, in a bizarre press conference National Rifle Association spokesman Wayne LaPierre made it crystal clear that (i) the NRA only represents gun manufacturers who want o limits of any kind on the deadly products and (ii) the NRA doesn't give a damn about the lives lost or damaged by the nation's lunatic gun laws.  It is all about the gun manufacturer's bottom line.  That's why the NRA's solution to school shooting is placing armed police - at tax payer expense, of course - in every school as opposed to any limits on assault weapons.  No mention was made of shopping malls, theaters and the growing number of other venues where got toting lunatics have used automatic weapons to commit mass murder.  The irony is that just shortly before LaPierre's deranged press conference a killing spree took place in rural Pennsylvania that left three people dead, including a woman decorating a church for a Christmas party for children, and several state police officers wounded before the shooter was killed by police.  For a demonstration of how insane gun ownership has become in America, this chart is illuminating. A column in the Washington Post looks at the insanity that the NRA represents.  Here are excerpts:

Absurd, unbelievable, tragic, obscene — I grope for words to describe the National Rifle Association’s proposal for how the nation should respond to last week’s slaughter in Newtown: More guns in the schools.

The idea is so insane that as far as I’m concerned — and, I hope, as far as a still-grieving nation is concerned — the NRA has forfeited the right to be taken seriously on matters of public policy. Newtown is still burying six-year-olds and Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s chief, wants more freaking guns in the schools. Wow.

Where to begin? Let’s assume, for the moment, that we decide to pay the multi-billion-dollar cost of placing one gun-toting officer in every school. What would the officer’s orders be? Shoot anyone who looks suspicious? If not, the officer would wait until an assailant — someone like Adam Lanza — displayed a gun or started firing. What sort of arsenal, and itchy trigger finger, would the officer need to be certain of shooting the assailant before the assailant shot the officer?

Now consider the profile of these mass shooters, such as Adam Lanza. These disturbed young men are meticulous in planning their unspeakable crimes. Does it occur to the NRA that if a would-be shooter knew there would be armed police officers at the school (or movie theater, or grocery store), he might be sure to wear body armor? So will the school cops wear body armor, too? Do we require students to wear uniforms of Kevlar too?

The NRA will never, ever admit that the problem is too many guns, not too few. As Post columnist Fareed Zakaria pointed out so eloquently in his recent column, there is mental illness in all industrialized countries. There are violent video games in all those countries, too. But we’re the only country that makes guns, including military-style assault weapons, available to anyone who wants to buy them. This is not freedom. It is a tyranny of death and destruction — a tyranny of which the National Rifle Association is proud. This may be the word I’ve been looking for: evil.

The Washington Post's editorial board ended its main page editorial that ripped Mr LaPierre as new asshole with this summation of the problem:

Indeed, Mr. LaPierre dodged the really big question: When will we muster the common sense to prohibit the sale of military-style assault weapons to civilians? President Obama has promised rapid action to revive the ban on semiautomatic rifles that expired in 2004 and still makes sense. These guns, such as the Bushmaster that Mr. Lanza used to kill 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, are modeled on military weapons. They load and shoot rapidly. Mr. La­Pierre asked, “Since when did ‘gun’ automatically become a bad word?” We would respond: Why do we allow weapons designed for war to be bought and sold on our streets?

 The New York Daily News editorial was equally blunt in its condemnation of LaPierre and the NRA:

Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association will forever now be known as America’s maddest gunman.  In style and substance, his performance Friday in delivering his organization’s response to the Newtown massacre revealed the obsessive, lunatic paranoia behind its worship of firearms.

A week after a gunman armed with an assault rifle murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and ever so shortly after the bells there tolled for the dead, LaPierre lashed out at everyone and everything but the weapons that were used to kill.

 

The Post's editorial board is correct.  The real solution that is obvious to anyone not on the de facto payroll of the gun manufacturers: ban assault weapons, limit the availability of automatic pistols, and leave hunting rifles and simple hand guns as the only type of guns available to hunters and those who in their delusions believe having a hand gun in their home makes them safer.  As for the gun manufacturers and Mr. LaPierre, they can go to Hell in my view.