In a press conference that bordered on laughable, the NRA listed a laundry lists of culprits that led to the Newtown massacre: violence in video games, gun-free school zones, the mentally ill crazy people conspiring to slaughter children, the news media and the entertainment industry.
Of course, NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre didn’t blame the proliferation of guns and the easy access to rapid-fire assault weapons on the shooting tragedy that left 20 children and eight adults dead. Lapierre blamed legislation restricting guns on school campuses as making school children easy targets for insane killers.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Lapierre said.
In a wide-ranging speech, LaPierre offered the solution of more armed personnel in schools to defend our children. LaPierre also wants a national database to track people suffering from mental illness. It’s ironic that the NRA wants the government to track people with mental illness and put restrictions on the entertainment industry, but they don’t want any restrictions on guns.
“Rather than face their own moral failings the media demonizes gun owners,” LaPierre said.
LaPierre’s speech was interrupted by two protestors, one of which who raised a banner saying: “NRA Killing Our Children”
Reactions to the NRA’s statement was swift.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the statement “a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country.”
“Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe,” he said. “Enough. As a country, we must rise above special interest politics,” according to CNN.
Mark Kelly, the husband of Gabby Gifford, the former congresswoman shot during a rally in Arizona, posted his disgust on his Facebook page.
Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut and husband to former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who was seriously injured in a shooting in Tuscon last year, expressed disappointment in the NRA’s remarks in a post to his Facebook page.
“The NRA could have chosen to be a voice for the vast majority of its own members who want common sense, reasonable safeguards on deadly firearms, but instead it chose to defend extreme pro-gun positions that aren’t even popular among the law abiding gun owners it represents,” Kelly said.
Even conservatives disagreed with the NRA’s statement.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said armed guards at schools weren’t conducive to a positive learning environment.
