#1: Wayne LaPierre
Wayne LaPierre might not be as paranoid as Glenn Beck, as hateful as Ann Coulter, or as hostile to reality as Rush Limbaugh, but on all three accounts, he comes close.
What really makes LaPierre so reprehensible -- so dangerous -- is that, unlike the three aforementioned court jesters, LaPierre is the vice president of the National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in the country.
More than that, while Beck, Coulter and Limbaugh market their commentary directly to other like-minded people, LaPierre has demonstrated that even the people he is supposed to be representing are of no concern to him.
A recent survey by GOP pollster Frank Luntz showed the following among registered NRA members:
- 87% agree that support for Second Amendment rights goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.
- 74% support requiring criminal background checks of anyone purchasing a gun.
- 79% support requiring gun retailers to perform background checks on all employees.
Yet in spite of the overwhelming support for these common sense gun control laws by their own membership, LaPierre and the rest of the NRA leadership have feverishly opposed any gun control measures of any variety.
But LaPierre warrants the #1 spot for more than just his failure to consider even the opinions he is supposed to represent. Consider his now notorious response to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.
In a press release following the shooting, LaPierre delivered what could only be called a flailing tantrum in which he blamed everything possible for the tragedy, except for lax gun control laws.
Most prominently, LaPierre blamed violent movies and video games, apparently with the expectation that nobody would remember the NRA's flailing tantrum about Marilyn Manson following the Columbine shooting.
LaPierre then asserted what everyone must have known by then was coming: His opinion that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," after which he called for armed guards in all school zones.
LaPierre apparently did this in the shallow hopes that nobody would point out the following:
- There were armed guards at Columbine. They didn't help.
- Bill Clinton had proposed a bill that would have expanded police forces enough to accommodate the NRA's suggestion in 2000. At the time, LaPierre and the NRA opposed it.
- LaPierre's suggestion that the only solution is "a good guy with a gun" has no basis in reality.
The idea that someone who has never received any training at all could leap in and save the day from an armed shooter no different from a police officer or soldier who has received years of training is not only a completely unrealistic fantasy. It is, in fact, the very same fantasy catered to by the movies and video games that LaPierre had tried to blame for the massacre.
And yet this still isn't even the worst of it.
Shortly after LaPierre's flailing press release, he and the rest of the NRA leadership vowed to fight a United Nations treaty to regulate the global arms trade when negotiations begin again in March of 2013.
The proposed treaty would have had no affect at all on gun ownership in the U.S. Instead, it is meant to pertain exclusively to "global transfers," and is specifically intended to prevent weapons from being sold to terrorists.
Let me repeat that. The treaty is designed to prevent the arming of terrorists. And Wayne LaPierre and the rest of the NRA leadership are opposed to it.
Or to put it in the most blunt terms possible: Wayne LaPierre wants to sell guns to the terrorists.
Wayne LaPierre is the #1 most wanted infotainment instigator, not only for being a blight on public discourse, but for being a genuine menace to society. He and his cohorts are disregarding everything, even the input of the NRA members themselves, all for the expressed purpose of making sure the arms industry can still profit by selling weapons to people who actively seek to use them against us.
And when the direct results of their business practices manifest themselves in the form of a national tragedy, all LaPierre and his cohorts see are perfect opportunities to sell more guns.
If you or anyone you know is a registered NRA member, you are strongly encouraged to cancel your membership and stop funding LaPierre and his partners in crime. Just as was said of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA, there are plenty of far better, far more responsible organizations in America who will actually listen to your input and use your donations as intended.
The only language LaPierre understands is money, so the only way he will ever start listening to the members of the NRA is if they take their money away from him.
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