National Rifle Association (NRA) Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre presented a paradigm for controlling gun-toting killers in the United States that affirms an unstable, asymmetric, disproportionate and treacherous approach certain to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the epidemic of wanton violence involved in mass random shootings.
The tragic circumstances of the Sandy Hook Elementary School murders in Connecticut have served at least this one useful purpose–exposing the NRA as an organization of self-righteous, self aggrandizing “good guys” with guns, and lots of them, with the presumptuous temerity to hold themselves out as ‘the answer’ rather than part of the problem. His nationally-publicized comments* should help to galvanize the forces in favor of gun control. (* see video below.) Assuming his comments represent the official position of the NRA, that organization has revealed itself as accommodating, protecting and defending revolutionary extremists advancing maniacal, partisan notions opposing every aspect of the American Constitution.
Abbreviated to its core, the NRA’s themes are:
- The greater number of guns that you have in the hands of US citizens the less crime US citizens will suffer at the hands of what Lapierre refers to as the “unknown number of genuine monsters” lurking in the country;
- All members of the NRA and its allies are “good guys” available in a minute’s notice to respond to and kill any “bad guys” with guns;
- To rely upon law enforcement to respond to emergency situations like Sandy Hook necessarily involves unnecessary delay, a delay easily eliminated by having the always available good guys of the NRA shoot and kill whoever they perceive to be the bad guy;
- Membership in the NRA signifies virtuous citizenship, adherence to all rules that are good for the country and the unwavering courage of its individual members to protect not only themselves but their fellow citizens.
- There is no need to maintain a court system that laboriously attempts to decide guilt or innocence. The righteous members of the NRA representing “good” are quite capable of deciding those issues spontaneously. They, not an adversarial trial system, will replace evidence, testimony, careful examination and reflection and decision-making by juries with virtuous street justice.
This is the vision of the NRA.