With a catchy one-liner, NRA Executive Vice President and C.E.O., Wayne LaPierre won the most recent national gun debate against the likes of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama with common sense, and a very simple and straightforward message, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
LaPierre’s push-back against anybody calling for additional gun control measures was absolute and unyielding; and he even named the real culprits for any increase in violence in America. He pointed in the direction of the various parts of a blood-thirsty media who are minimally guilty as “silent enablers” and very likely guilty of actual complicity as co-conspirators in the recent upsurge in violence in the United States.
Not content to merely describe the problem as it effects schools, LaPierre proposed a meaningful solution in the wake of the mass killings in Newtown, Connecticut -- armed guards in all schools. In order to facilitate getting armed guards into America's schools, Mr. LaPierre announced the launching of an NRA-sponsored “National School Shield” program. The program is to be spearheaded by former congressman Asa Hutchinson; and it will give advice to officials on how to properly secure their schools in their respective jurisdictions. Lapierre emphasized that the proposed program would not be a strain on budgets because it would largely involve volunteer guards.
According to Mr. LaPierre, “This will be a program that does not depend upon massive funding from local authorities or the federal government. Instead, it will make use of local volunteers serving in their own communities.” He concluded that, “The National Rifle Association is the obvious choice to sponsor this program.”
What follows will be the political battle in the trenches of congress, in the press and in a variety of public forums. As with the fiscal and budget debates, real conservative-minded Republicans need to be unyielding against all attacks and unremitting when on the counter-attack.
4 comments:
It has been suggested that veterans could perform this function.
Vincenzo!
Good point...
There are many Americans who would be appropriate for duties like these. Retired policemen and veterans immediately come to mind.
Remember, the national defense contemplates the implementation of well-armed unorganized militiamen for various purposes during times of need. This militia is something that goes far deeper into society than the National Guard.
Needless to say with a specific purpose like the one outlined by Wayne LaPierre being on a national scale, the unorganized militia would be need to be organized for that particular purpose --- that organization should be sponsored and overseen by a large national association of citizens and not by the national governmental --- of course it should be run quite locally by neighbors who know the volunteers who they are selecting to protect the children in school.
As Mr. LaPierre said, “The National Rifle Association is the obvious choice to sponsor this program.”
A Retrospective Moment: Earlier today on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” David Gregory decided that it was his mission to personally push back and at times harangue the NRA C.E.O. Wayne LaPierre with the same questions over and over, as if that technique would be a good substitute for real journalism. LaPierre refused to buy into any of Gregory’s anti-gun notions or formulations. In fact, Wayne LaPierre did some push-back of his own when he told “host” David Gregory that, “There’s a media machine in this country that wants to blame guns.” The only thing that LaPierre failed to say was that NBC’s Mr. Gregory was just a small cog in that media machine.
Just last Sunday on “Meet The Press” former Brooklynite and U.S. Education Secretary Bill Bennett surprised Mr. Gregory by suggesting that the presence of armed guards in schools might be the right answer for the immediate problem of gun violence of the sort that overtook the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Since then, Bennett says he has positively revisited that suggestion; and that now he would confront those who might strenuously disagree with his suggestion of armed guards with this exquisitely insightful pair of questions: “[To someone who might say that] the blood of the Connecticut victims was ultimately on the hands of pro-gun rights advocates.... To that person I would ask: Suppose the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary who was killed lunging at the gunman was instead holding a firearm and was well trained to use it. Would the result have been different? Or suppose you had been in that school when the killer entered, would you have preferred to be armed? ... Evidence and common sense suggest yes.”
Meanwhile, today a frenzied fantasy crowd walked over the Brooklyn Bridge expecting that they would be able to force some kind of quick fix to the fearsome menace that they see presented by a nation, state and city of well-armed and free Americans.
"The only thing that LaPierre failed to say was that NBC’s Mr. Gregory was just a small cog in that media machine."
Why give him even that much credit? He's more like lube in this instance - utterly unimportant, except as a propagandist. A parrot would have had more charm.
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