Leave aside for a moment the arguments for or against weapon restrictions – at this moment the NRA is holding its much awaited press conference.
And now we know whose fault it is. The media done it.
He also added:
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
I hope he’s embarrassing the hell out of the NRA membership. In fact, I think he may be.
More: the press and Washington are consumed with ‘hatred’ for gun freedoms?
More: Obama’s fault too cuz he didn’t support a school policing policy. And of course, that’s what we need. He wants Congress to “put armed police officers in every single school in this nation”. (and who pays for that Wayne?)
Oh dear, he calls on us to “erect a cordon of protection around our kids”. (what – a new Secret Service?) Oh wow, he wants student and teacher training. Okay, this is where the promised NRA ‘meaningful contribution’ comes in – they’re going to organize this thing. And they’ll make it available to ‘the world’. That’s their ‘plan of action’. And Asa Hutchinson will head it!
Is he kidding?
I can’t wait for the questions – this is, after all, a press conference. And he just called his audience murderers. UPDATE: They took no questions. None.
This whole thing has been utterly bizarre.
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
Here is an interesting factoid for the “if everybody had a gun” crowd:
Mother Jones “set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.”
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Hey JR, how ya’ doing? I hope you’re enjoying our guvs plummeting approval numbers. I know I am!
I always love the claims that citizens can stop the bad guy with their own weapon. My favorite example of the insanity is that movie theatre killing.. It was dark – no one knew where the shots were actually coming from – just picture a half dozen customers joining in with their own weapons. Instead of 11 dead, there would have been at least twice that number. A perfect circular firing squad.
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The other good example of a guy with a gun happening onto the scene happened with the Gabby Giffords shooting. A man who’d been in another store came out and pulled his gun. Fortunately he didn’t fire because the shooter had already been apprehended and he would have shot the wrong guy.
I keep saying one simple fact: When these things happen the only person who really knows what’s going on is the shooter. Everyone else is just reacting.
And LaPierre will roast in hell.
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I and every other American wouldn’t trust ANYTHING written by Mother Jones any more than the average Liberal would trust anything from Fox.
That being said, they’re probably right. Whether by conscious choice – Doubtful in my opinion, or by random chance, “mass” killings have generally taken place in “gun free zones.”
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I’ll be forever grateful to Mother Jones for breaking the Romney “47 percent” story.
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Pingback: NRA Gets It From Both Sides - Points and Figures | Points and Figures
In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.”(JR)
Silly JR, thats because you guys dont have enough guns out there. You need to immediately arm every teacher, principal, guidance counselor……..Im sure within that whole group at least one of them wont choke and will actually be able to hit the crazed shooter. 😉 😉
Bang, bang. NRA, No, Really, Assholes……………..
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And he wasn’t only bizarre T4T, he was ANGRY. He apparently saw the NRA as the collatoral victim of Newtown. Amazing.
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…the NRA as the collatoral victim
No doubt he does. NRA’s got a LOT of money and political power riding on this…
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Not enough guns? Somebody might not choke? Hit the crazed shooter…and how many innocent bystanders.
Shoot and kill an innocent bystander while defending your 2nd Amendment rights and you have bought the farm…prison farm, that is.
Watch the videos to see how your fantasy would play out:
Then watch part two:
Of course, both videos got attacked by the gun crazies who know that these videos are left-wing bullshit.
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JR
The winky faces were there so you would get my sarcasm……..oops, I guess they didnt work. 😉
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T4T,
I was just having a senior moment. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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Oldtimers! I think Im starting that process too. Didnt think it would happen this soon, hmmm, maybe its the alcohol. 🙂
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It’s not the alcohol – trust me on this – it’s something in the air I think.
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And yet, JR, people will fiercely defend the argument that “if only someone had a gun”.
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Just saw a funny Facebook comment: “Mr. LaPierre hasn’t met his good guy with a gun yet…”
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Good one.
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People want answers / cures for problems, Moe. “If only someone had a gun” is just one occurrence of this, just as “ban assault weapons” is another.
“If only someone had a gun” might have helped in Newtown, just as there having already been some form of gun ban in place might have helped. Neither, however, is a valid argument if spoken as an absolute.
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Agree – but I’m pretty much not hearing people talk in absolutes. I think at one itme they might have, but recent years have made it clear that the ‘no guns’ argument will go exactly nowhere. So the goals are now incremental and the language somewhat modified.
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That’s still going to go nowhere because Americans, for the most part, are smart enough to realize that the gun-grabbers are using incremental goals in order to reach the same end – disarmament – and we’re not concerned much by a shift in the rhetoric used.
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“Americans for the most part” support the right to bear but are opposed to the insanely permissive gun laws. Things like armour piercing bullets, magazines and drums that are legal . . . even NRA membership is, by a large margin, opposed to those things being legal.
Most NRA members are not too worried about having to defend theselves against the government. THe public voice of the NRA espouses extreme views.
Just like most liberals don’t support the extremist of some loud voices, same iwth gun owners.
I know plenty (hell, I live in frackin’ Florida) and they don’t see things the way you do jonolan. I’d define you – while a smart and thoughtful person – quite extreme in your views in this (and a few other) areas.
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There are three reasons why my views seem extreme to you:
1 – You disagree with them and all Liberals find those who utterly disagree with them to be extreme.
2 – Most of my positions are deontological and principle-based as opposed to being utilitarian and subject to compromise.
3 – I’m wise enough to know that the enemies of my nation will never settle for the lesser points and will always continue to push for their final solutions. Hence, I do not give them that first inch lest I set them up to take the last mile.
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As I said on Day One, if those kids had been packin’ heat the result might have been very different. I’m for giving every child a gun at birth (or personhood) like we do with social security numbers.
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@Ed
Yep, Im sure one of those 10yr olds woulda been able to keep his/her eyes open while shooting. Now, whether they could squeeze the trigger is another question. Im sure you probably would have been able to help out after you came out from underneath the teachers desk.
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All joking and Liberal treason aside, I can think of one young women, Victoria Soto, who could have changed things in Newtown if she’d been armed. She had clear line of sight with no collaterals and could have possibly put Lanza down if she’d been armed.
Sadly, she wasn’t and, as a result of that, she died defending her students as best she could – by hiding them and defying Lanza.
To be honest and fair though, she’s the only one that I’ve heard of that could have done so without “endangering” the students. I’ve got to “fear quote” endangering because, in situations like this, what IS endangering beyond what the perp is doing.
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Possibly she does. Possibly Lanza only has one gun and then shoots her and uses her gun to shoot more kids. Oh the possibilities.
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Yes, but we know what the REALITIES were, don’t we? A well-armed – though there are STILL real questions as to the specifics of his arms – crazy went into an undefended zone and murdered a lot of innocent people, most of whom were small children.
Now I was speaking out of accuracy and fairness. Soto could have solved for the problem if she’d been armed. The others probably less so and only with added risk to the kids.
I don’t actually advocate arming elementary and middle school teachers. Until we start teaching children gun safety again and start teaching them the consequences of physical violence it’s just too dangerous to do so.
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Hindsight is always 20/20
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I recall a sitcom from the early 1970s, “All in the Family”, origin of the iconic Archie Bunker. In one episode Archie did a television public service announcement; he advised viewers that the simple way to end (then prevalent) plane hijackings was to “arm all the passengers”. The absurdity of it was hilarious at the time; now of course it’s become just conventional wisdom on the right.
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I too remember the “All In The Family” episode about arming all the airplane passengers, and just to punctuate the point, I learned from Rachel Maddow last night that Columbine high school did have an armed security guard at the time of their shooting. He was ineffective. QED.
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