The National Rifle Association’s CEO Wayne LaPierre appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning on December 23, 2012 to continue on with his bold and highly innovative plan to curb school violence, as he simply reinforced his earlier statement from this past Friday on December 21, 2012 during the NRA’s press conference when he said:
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!”
Trust me; it doesn't get anymore innovative than that, and on Meet the Press, LaPierre again doubled down on his gun rights positions by attempting to protect guns at all costs, as he discussed pushing Congress to pay for more school security guards in a national initiative to install former military personnel and local law enforcement officers at schools, instead of agreeing to gun regulations.
LaPierre continues to insist that banning or regulating assault weapons or guns in general “will not prevent mass shootings.” He then referenced the country of Israel as a model for school safety as he said:
“Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing. They said: 'we're going to stop it,' and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then.”
LaPierre made some intriguing points, so let’s go over a few. First point, in an era when so many of these Republican, tough guys like Texas Governor Rick Perry and former presidential candidate Ron Paul have openly bragged about abolishing the Department of Education to save money, the NRA is now going to lobby Congress for armed guards to patrol the education hallways? That would be like asking the same group that wants to cut federal, education funding on one hand to create and spend new, education based funding on the other hand.
Second point, LaPierre’s plan is basically a call for more big government funding for yet another government subsidized, entitlement program, and it seems quite contradictory to suggest such a thing when the Republicans have made it perfectly and politically clear how they feel about what they consider to be entitlements, because someone is going to have to pay for all of this.
Third point, what will it say about the NRA and the Republicans if they can somehow manage to cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare—what they list as entitlements, while they implement their version of an entitlement by their definition of an entitlement by federally funding what would basically be a “Fast and Furious” program for schools?
Fourth point; former, Republican Rep. from Arkansas and national director of the NRA’s school protection emergency response program Asa Hutchinson claims that local districts should make the call about armed guards in their schools, which means not the federal government, despite the fact that LaPierre said that the NRA wants Congress to get financially involved. Well maybe the local districts and the NRA should pay for it too.
Fifth point, Hutchinson also told ABC’s This Week:
“I've made it clear that it should not be a mandatory law, that every school has this. There should be local choice.”
If Hutchinson gets his way about not making the issue of armed guards in the schools a mandatory law, where does that leave certain schools in all of this? In other words, if it’s left up to each individual district, schools in affluent areas like Newtown, Connecticut will be in a better financial position to pay for armed guards than many of the other schools that are not in affluent areas—public, inner-city, urban schools.
Sixth point, there is nothing wrong with security. Many schools already have security in the form of metal detectors and security guards/law enforcement, but the NRA’s plan will have to be patterned after President Bush 43’s plan called “No Child Left Behind.” The NRA’s plan will have to be no school left behind, because we the people, the 99% cannot allow the corrupted, lobbying system to protect the abounding at the expense of the underprivileged!
Seventh point; notice how the mighty, conservative laden, Republican laden NRA was so hasty and so agog to appoint Congress/the federal government with the financial tag for this project. Whatever happened to “send it back to the states?” Where is all of the “state’s rights” chatter on this one? Where is the “get the government out of our lives” chatter on this one? After all, conservatives are notorious for saying that the government will just screw it up, because it can’t do anything right!
Eighth point, why doesn’t LaPierre contact the private sector for financial help with this armed guard plan? Where is Bain Capital when you need it? Bain could outsource the task to China and save the NRA some money.
Ninth point, where is all of the free market, private sector, capitalist talk that people like Sarah Palin and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a career off of? If the incompetent, federal government would just get out of the way, the free market would come in and handle this situation right?
Ask yourself this question. Why would the private sector jump at the chance to invest in Chinese sweatshops, but then drag their feet on investing in arming the schools?
One reason is because the federal government is better equipped to deal with such a massive, nationwide undertaking—an undertaking that would probably include the private sector on some level, and the other reason is because the responsibility of arming the schools would create jobs, but not necessarily a wide enough profit margin for Bain Capital—not nearly as wide of a margin as funding the overseas sweatshops constantly provides!
So when LaPeirre said that the NRA would push Congress to fund this operation, he was not kidding about it. That statement was crafted by design not by accident, because the incompetence of government funding/stimulus depends greatly on the importance, the wants, and the needs of my latest project.
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