Snohomish County follows NRA advice as LaPierre scores at CPAC

Three months after the Sandy Hook tragedy in Connecticut, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office launched a new program today that sounds almost exactly like the solution to school attacks offered in December by the National Rifle Association.

According to KIRO News, more than a hundred schools in unincorporated Snohomish County will be “regularly patrolled” by “new School Services deputies.” It’s what NRA Executive Vice President suggested in December, one week after the Newtown attack that left 26 students and educators dead: Armed guards to repel armed criminals.

At the time, LaPierre – who today wowed the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference – was roundly criticized for being an extremist. The NRA membership was smeared as “scum sucking dunces” by a reader of the Seattle Times, as this column noted. Today, three months after the massacre, the idea seems good enough, provided it came from a different source, for KIRO to have devoted news coverage.

Wayne LaPierre CPACWayne LaPierre CPAC

While gun rights advocates can debate whether there is some small degree of media hypocrisy at work in the Snohomish County story, LaPierre was busy blasting what he called the “elitists in the mainstream media,” according to the National Review.

“Let them be damned,” he declared to a standing ovation.

For the audience of conservatives from across the nation, LaPierre knocked the proverbial ball out of the park with a speech that rocked the room and hammered the Obama administration.

He was particularly focused on Vice President Joe Biden’s self-defense advice about scaring off home invasion robbers or rapists by taking a double-barreled shotgun outside and firing shots in the air.

“The vice president of the United States actually told women facing an attack to just empty their shotguns into the air,” LaPierre said, according to ABC News and the National Review. “Honestly, have they lost their minds over at the White House? No doubt the violent predators would love to face a woman with a shotgun that’s empty.”

“Keep your advice,” he stated. “We’ll keep our guns.”

According to the Washington Examiner and National Review, LaPierre also criticized an on-line video from the Department of Homeland Security that advises people to defend themselves with scissors in the event of a mass shooting.

“Scissors,” La Pierre questioned. “That’s their answer? Let’s get this straight: To protect our children at school, we recommend a trained professional with a gun, they recommend scissors? And they say we’re crazy? It’s sheer madness.”

Less “madness” would appear to be at work in Snohomish County, where KIRO reports that five more deputies have been assigned to the special school unit. Sheriff John Lovick said the initial funding comes out of his existing budget, but he will be looking for additional funding to maintain the effort.

When LaPierre first suggested armed guards at schools under the NRA’s Shield program, criticism from anti-gunners and many in the mainstream press erupted across the airwaves. It remains to be seen how they will react now that the idea for additional armed school security comes from one of the state’s blue county sheriffs.

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