NRA’s solution for gun violence? More guns, of course
by David Pinar on Dec. 21, 2012, under Pol. & Govt.
Executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) Wayne LaPierre gave a “Press Conference” today, in response to the Connecticut grade school shooting last Friday and subsequent calls for better gun control legislation. Since the NRA didn’t allow any questions it was more of a lecture than a Press Conference, and his solution for preventing more school shootings? More guns! LaPierre called on Congress to put armed adults in every single public school by the end of the holiday break. Great! Our children growing up thinking the only way they can be safe in the quintessential American tradition of going to school to learn is to be guarded by an adult carrying a loaded gun. Brilliant! Even more brilliant is LaPierre’s statement:
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Well, Mr. LaPierre, we here in Tucson happen to know that’s just not true. What stopped a bad guy here with a gun by the name of Jared Loughner was his having to pause to reload in the presence of unarmed civilians. And if he’d had to pause to reload after firing only 10 bullets instead of 30 with his legally purchased 30 round ammo clips those unarmed civilians would have stopped him a lot sooner, possibly saving lives, certainly saving more from being wounded. Even more proving Mr. LaPierre wrong is that the one “good guy with a gun” who was there almost shot one of the heroes instead of the bad guy. As Joe Zamudio explained it to Fox and Friends:
“I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready. “I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the cornerI saw a man holding a gun. And that’s who I at first thought was the shooter,” Zamudio recalled. “I told him to ‘Drop it, drop it!’ “
But the man with the gun wasn’t the shooter. He was one of the heroic unarmed civilians who had wrested the gun away from Loughner. Had Zamudio shot first and asked questions later things would have gone terribly wrong very quickly. Zamudio agrees.
“I was very lucky. Honestly, it was a matter of seconds. Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of the real shooter, holding him down. So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. … I was really lucky.”
Yes, Joe, you were lucky. The heroic citizen who helped disarm Jared Loughner was lucky. We were all lucky. But I don’t like to rely on luck. Especially when it comes to our children. So we’ll take a big pass on posting armed adults at our schools, good guys who may not have Joe Zamudio’s luck, and good sense.
But what we will do is ban all assault weapons except on the place they were designed for – battlefields. And we’ll ban ammo clips with a capacity of more than 10 rounds And make every single purchase of a firearm – gun show or internet – subject to a background check. And increase support and care for mental illness, and greatly improve our ability to keep firearms out of the reach of the mentally ill. And that only as a good first step.
