The NRA Misses a Chance to Join the Mainstream

Let’s say you were the face of the National Rifle Association and had to give a press conference a few days after a massacre in a school in which 20 kids and six teachers were killed. Thought about it a minute? Ok . . . could you have possibly given speech worse or less insightful than that given by NRA Vice Executive President Wayne LaPierre?

Look, there are all kinds of arguments for owning or not owning guns, but LaPierre blew it. Given the chance to either not offer any “solutions,” or perhaps offering a token gesture about “taking a look” at gun regulations, LaPierre continued the NRA’s often paranoid stance that any change is bad change, and while understanding slippery slopes exist all over the place on these politically charged issues, LaPierre fumbled the moment.

The NRA, which has long offered a variety of gun safety courses for all types of people, has now lost that good message. The NRA is now perceived by many as a group of wild-eyed crazies ranting about government confiscation of guns, a group advocating stock piling weapons for self-defense and the protection of our children, a group urging everyone to pack a pistol “just in case.” And on and on.

LaPierre to me sounded like a man completely closed to any sound but his. No discussion is needed for LaPierre because he can’t hear. By waving the flag over the 2^nd amendment, the NRA continually brings the NRA base into the fold by feeding the paranoia that the government is coming for your guns, that unless you carry a weapon bad things could happen to you, or that the only way to stop school massacres is to make sure a cop is in each and every school .

Lapierre had a chance to say, “I look forward to talking to legislators about meaningful gun controls.” He didn’t say anything like that, and he has continued to say that any restrictions won’t work and are merely an effort to take away every American’s patriotic right to own a gun.

The one thing Lapierre has gotten right is that the information about certain guns, notably assault rifles, is often wrong. They’re not automatic weapons or machine guns, they are not military weapons, they do not fire higher power bullets than other weapons (the .223 Bushmaster used in the Sandy Hook shooting is a visual copy of a military rifle, but is a semi-automatic weapon and its ammo, though thought to be among the widest used rifle caliber in the U.S. is largely used as a target round and is considered an unsuitable caliber for anything other than “varmit” hunting, though it has obviously been used with devastating  effect otherwise).

But besides blaming everyone from the media to video games for this violence, Lapierre declines to even hint that guns themselves are part of the issue. It sounds good to say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun. Sure that might work, but let’s also think that it might not . . . There were two armed guards (off-duty cops) at Columbine, both of which shot at one of the shooters, and there were armed security officers on the Virginia Tech campus.

Even well trained good guys don’t necessarily hit everything at which they shoot. Bullets miss, they fragment and they go through doors and walls. I’m thinking those aren’t good things, no matter how “good a guy” is when he’s shooting at a bad guy, who probably isn’t standing still and is shooting back and may be mixed into a crowd. One merely needs to look at records of police shootings . . . number of shots fired, missed etc. . . . to see that not everything aimed at gets hit. So now imagine an armed security guard trying to bring down a shooter running down a hallway lined with kid-filled classrooms. It all sounds great until a guard shoots a teacher. No offense, but these aren’t highly trained combat Delta Force guys.

All kinds of politically driven rhetoric will be flying through the air on this one. The questions remains: Are there reasonable legislative steps that might be taken to reduce (or possibly reduce) misuse of guns?

Close the gun-buying  loopholes, make sure the “can’t buy” lists include everyone who should be either mentally or legally (felons etc.) disqualified. Develop a rapid background check system. Limit extended round ammo clips. Enforce current laws. While our awareness, as well as policies and procedures, have changed dramatically since the Columbine shooting, clearly something more needs to be done. (Mental  health concerns have again popped up after Sandy Hook. The failures at Columbine, including the failure of law enforcement to pursue reported warnings about the shooters as well as to act on specific threats about one of the shooters (including carrying out a search warrant) raised the debate, but Sandy Hook should raise it again on multiple levels.

It’s a start, and the discussion needs to begin. Not on high-flying patriotic issues, but embracing practical and reasonable laws that have a chance of lowering gun violence and serve to preserve the rights of lawful gun owners. The NRA is on the wrong side of the wave, embracing its most radical members. The discussion will go on without them.