Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association, has chosen the conservative website, the Daily Caller, as the loving home of his newest paranoid rant. We won't have cops! We won't have guns! Dangerous wild-eyed immigrants will take over! It's the apocalypse, the plague, Armageddon! Too bad - for him - that those pesky facts he chooses to overlook really do matter. Too bad - for him - that facts aren't fluid things.
Let's go through it, shall we?
"It has always been sensible for good citizens to own and carry firearms for lawful protection against violent criminals who prey on decent people. During the second Obama term, however, additional threats are growing. Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States. Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world . . . ." (Emphasis added).
Thing is, Politifact evaluated the claim that Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the world, and rated it false in December 2010. Responding to a rousing speech by Texas Lt. Governor Dewhurst, who made this Phoenix kidnapping claim, Politifact noted, "Phoenix has indeed experienced hundreds of kidnappings over the past few years. However, we found no evidence to that only Mexico City experiences more. Experts said such rankings can't be made based on available information. If they could, they speculate, other cities would prove to have more kidnappings than Arizona's capital. We rated Dewhurst's statement False."
"The president flagrantly defies the 2006 federal law ordering the construction of a secure border fence along the entire Mexican border. So the border today remains porous not only to people seeking jobs in the U.S., but to criminals whose jobs are murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping . . . ."
Politifact assessed the claim made by President Obama in 2011 that the border fence is nearly complete. And, in fact, Politifact noted that the "Department of Homeland Security officials told us they have finished 649 out of 652 miles of fencing (99.5 percent), which includes 299 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fence." The 2006 federal law LaPierre refers to required two layers of reinforced fencing - but the next year, the law was altered to allow Border Patrol to "have the leeway to decide which type of fencing was appropriate in various regions." Republicans didn't get their double-layer fence with a moat and alligators in the moat, but they got 649 miles of fencing. Not only that, they got a President who deported a record number of undocumented immigrants in 2009, and slightly less in 2011.
"A heinous act of mass murder—either by terrorists or by some psychotic who should have been locked up long ago—will be the pretext to unleash a tsunami of gun control."
According to Mother Jones' extensive tracking of mass killings, “Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii . . . .' And, noted Washington Post's Ezra Klein, in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally." And study after study, including one conducted by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, has led to the conclusion that more guns means more homicides. And, according to economist Richard Florida, "States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths." According to LaPierre, mass killers are simply a collective group of psychos and criminals, but he's playing fast and loose with facts. More guns don't lead to less crime, and mass killers aren't all whack job degenerates - and LaPierre knows a little bit about whack job degenerates.
"Meanwhile, President Obama is leading this country to financial ruin, borrowing over a trillion dollars a year for phony 'stimulus' spending and other payoffs for his political cronies. Nobody knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is broke, there likely won’t be enough money to pay for police protection. And the American people know it."
"Payoffs for his political cronies" - who would that be? That's just nonsense - and note that LaPierre chose to be a little coy with details in this accusation. More importantly (getting past the petty grievances of a bitter gun-toter), if there aren't enough cops on the street, blame Republican governors and local red-run government. As Think Progress reported in December 2012, "The GOP record on funding police departments in recent years is equally dismal. Red states have been responsible for the bulk of cuts to public sector jobs during the Recession, which result in significant cuts to police forces (and teachers, incidentally). The American Jobs Act would provide significant support for state hiring of more police, but House and Senate Republicans have obstructed the bill for over a year. And the House Republican budget could very well cut federal grants that allow states to hire new police officers."
Responsible Americans realize that the world as we know it has changed. We, the American people, clearly see the daunting forces we will undoubtedly face: terrorists, crime, drug gangs, the possibility of Euro-style debt riots, civil unrest or natural disaster.
He left out the End Times, the Zombie Apocalypse and the Mayan Calendar - but in that one phrase there's paranoia enough for ten End Times.
The world hasn't changed, but maybe American people have. Maybe sane, sensible people have come to the realization that guns don't solve violence, have learned that the European financial crisis is due to the austerity that Republicans would implement if given half a chance, and that, if civil unrest occurs, it will be at the hands of people like Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent, self-styled "protectors" of freedom and liberty, but in actuality, promoters of violence and chaos.
Wayne LaPierre is weakened and fighting back, but the American people don't support his vision of gun anarchy. Lucky for him, though, there are sites like the Daily Caller and Twitchy who'll post anything if it has the ring of "Obama sucks" to it.
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