Yesterday a man shot 4 firefighters in New York (using the same type of assault rifle used in Sandy Hook) while they were responding to a fire, two died. Several days ago 4 were killed in a shooting spree across Pennsylvania. A week before that, we all witnessed the national horror of the mass killings of children at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. This has been a bloody, awful year for gun violence in America and it seems as though it's continuing to the last possible moment. But nothing was so disturbing perhaps as the NRA press conference held just days before the Christmas holiday. In this conference, the very frightening director of that, group Wayne LaPierre, outline his vision for the future and in doing so has become America's official Grinch.
There's a new Grinch in town...
Granted, there are a few things we happen to agree with America's new Grinch on - for example there are likely improvements that can be made to school security and America's popular culture does seem to have dipped lower and lower of recent years becoming ever more violent in nature. What we don't agree with however is the vision of the future in America that he seems to be espousing - a vision that requires every American to be armed in order to prevent - you guessed it - being shot by other armed Americans. Grinch LaPierre doesn't ever want to consider viewing guns a problem - instead they are always and ever will be his only solution. The Grinch wants more guns, guns carried in the open, guns that carry extended magazines as well as assault rifles with semi-automatic capability. Back in the 1980's we had an expression for places that were that heavily armed and dangerous - Beirut - sounds a lot like what the Grinch is advocating.
As for his proposal, what if Sandy Hook had hired an armed guard before the massacre? One man armed say with a semi-automatic pistol. How would that guard have fared against a lunatic with an assault rifle with unlimited ammunition? He or she would have likely ended up just another corpse. Of course, the Grinch might respond to that; let's place a 50 caliber machine gun out front or an armored personnel carrier. It works in the third world, right?
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| At least this Grinch ain't packin' |
The reason why people are calling Mr. LaPierre crazy is simple:
- He may be the most insensitive, paranoid man on the planet (e.g. his main concern regarding the massacre of 26 6 year old students and their teachers was that it might be seen as an attack on his organization).
- He is blatantly incapable of participating in rational dialog. Each year in the US more people die from gunshots than in the past 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. The levels of gun violence are directly proportional to access to weapons.
- He is advocating something no sane person in this country wants - a country where it's not safe to live in without being heavily armed. We don't want to be Beirut, or Juarez, Mexico or the wild west (which by the way was not as dangerous as the US is now because believe it or not there weren't as many guns).
The full NRA Press Conference last week
We need to ask ourselves, why has the national media been listening to this lunatic for so long? Why does his relatively small organization hold sway over the national dialog on guns? How can a gun industry that makes only a few billion a year make such an impact on our lives in a multi-trillion dollar a year economy? Every year we pay more in medical costs for gun victims (more than 100,000 per year) than the gun industry earns.
If Grinch LaPierre wants to know why American culture is becoming so violent - he should start by looking at what the NRA has done over the years. He has advocated guns and violence as a means to control guns and violence - he's the Grinch who shot Christmas and he's taking aim at the New Year.
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