NRA's LaPierre tone deaf and offensive

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre is interrupted by protesters from Code Pink. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By Ann Marie Cox

Guardian UK

readersupportednews.org

22 December 12

The leading gun rights lobbyist gave a performance so tone-deaf that only he missed why 'put more guns in schools' sounds inept

ayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, came to the podium Friday with the pursed lips and furrowed brow of a banker anxious over accounting errors. Throughout the press conference, he seemed to be reaching for an emotional range that would reflect the horror and sorrow so many felt in the wake of the Sandy Hook killings.

But the most effective expression he could muster was that of someone trying to remember his lines. I would like to believe that LaPierre was as anguished and confused by the events of last week as the rest of us, but the man clearly suffers from constipation of the soul.

The NRA's proposal was tone-deaf to the scale of the tragedy and the psychic wreckage it left behind, in addition to being flat-out policy absurdity. The factual errors and logical twists that bedevil the group's concrete suggestion – arm the schools! – are so easily sussed out that they were expressed, repeatedly, in the 140 characters available on Twitter. To review the top two of these, briefly:

1) There is no evidence that arming school guards or posting police in schools makes them safer. Indeed, Columbine – the incident that kicked off the modern wave of school shootings – had an officer assigned to the site. Yet another recent mass shooting took place on an army base, Fort Hood, where the presences of many, many trained soldiers did not prevent the murders from taking place.

2) Mass shootings at schools aren't even close to the most lethal type of gun violence American children face: more young people die from accidental firearm injury every year than have perished in all the school spree killings in the US since 1960 (150).

Then there's a lot of the wait-what-if-we-actually-tried-this messiness: where do you get the money? Wouldn't you just be putting another gun into the mix? How about inner city schools? I won't even begin to dive into the ancillary policy fillips LaPierre added, finger-pops of insanity such as the "active national database of the mentally ill" (not just a huge logistical hassle, but probably unconstitutional) or his insinuation that if professionals can't be lured into playing prep-school Rambo, then maybe mom and dad can do it!

"The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids," LaPierre warned, "is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection." Right. "Absolute protection" is a concept best considered in the safety of one's own lead-lined safe, I think.

Then there's a point brought up with uncharacteristic subtlety by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie:

"I don't necessarily think having an armed guard outside every classroom is conducive to a positive learning environment."

That statement may come to mark a Nixon-to-China shift in the American gun control debate. We bleeding-heart liberals have plenty of statistics to use against the NRA's proposal at our disposal, but only the most no-nonsense Republican in the country can successfully make an anti-gun argument based entirely on sentiment: it just doesn't feel right.

I want to make a joke about how, next, he'll be having us hold hands and sing Kumbaya, but holding hands and singing Kumbaya is exactly what we do in these situations. Liberal or conservative, parent or child, journalist or politician, flyover or coastal, when a tragedy of this scale strikes, we hold each other up, we engage in the traditions of community that otherwise seem foreign or old-fashioned. We relearn why it is we argue so passionately – because we care so much.

That recalibration of moral compasses that has been on vivid display elsewhere in the political sphere has not taken place inside the NRA. While the rest of us were synchronizing our watches to half-past-time-for-bipartisanship, the NRA was locked in a basement room with access only to mid Tarantino-era movies (someone is gonna be pulling out their VHS player to watch Natural Born Killers tonight!) and crappy Flash video games.

Breathing that stale air, it's no wonder that the larger problem with the NRA's statement wasn't that it was riddled with error of fact and continuity, but that it was entirely self-involved. The group's disconnect from reality is only a function of their hermeneutic arrogance and pathological selfishness. Think about it: the best argument they could bring to the table, after a week of "respective" (as LaPierre said) silence, was "more guns" – a position undergirded by the belief that the NRA is in a position to help put that policy into place.

The press conference's opening promised: "This is the beginning of a serious conversation" – only to cut off the part of speaking that makes something a conversation: "We won't be taking any questions." Toward the end, LaPierre was even more forceful in cutting off attempts to invade their group fantasy with doubts:

"There'll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, this is the day for decisive action."

These is the rhetoric of men who don't see other people as human beings to be won over or reasoned with, but view them as merely obstacles. This is, point of fact, the skewed reasoning of psychopaths … and that's before we consider what they actually said, which was, to review: put more guns in schools.

LaPierre began his remarks petulantly, claiming that "because [of] all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week," an important part of the debate had been missed. "No one," he said, sputtering emphatically, "nobody – has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: how do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?"

Consider the level of conceit involved in claiming that merely criticizing the NRA could blind people to other aspects of the debate, and then consider what he's saying: that "no one – no body" addressed the "most important" question of protecting out children. This is exactly what everyone has turned over in their minds. Sometimes awkwardly, sometimes with not all the facts at hand, often ruled more by heart than head, but if there's a person who saw the news about Sandy Hook and didn't think, "How can we protect our children right now, starting today?"

Well, I would guess those people were in the bunker at the NRA, where the first and only question they have substantively addressed is:

 
"How do we protect ourselves?