The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them.
–-Wayne La Pierre
It’s not money. It’s not policy. It’s not even power.
It’s the politics of identity that’s what keeps the right going. The farther right you go, the harder their line. On the hard right, politics is always an existential crisis.
Matt Stoller said it well 7 years ago.
As long as individuals can stand up outside of the tribe and claim Americanism as their own, the right is revealed as weak, because it is their own lies about themselves that they cannot stand. Proof in the form of our existence is enough to make them angry. This is why… they keep getting madder as they keep gaining power. They are not really after a conservative agenda in terms of policy; they are not even after power, really. They are after a complete and utter subjugation of the American consciousness to their tribal mentality. And they will not stop until they get it. Hence, the culture wars. And now, the real wars. And unfortunately, I don’t think they are done.
Wayne La Pierre is a case in point. The depth of his vision was clear when he spoke at CPAC referring to the Constitution as nothing but “stains on a rotten piece of parchment paper in a museum somewhere” until they are “guarded by the blued steel and dry powder of a free and armed people…the Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.”
The way to address violence is not to limit gun ownership but to increase their proliferation:
I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school – and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.
Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work – and by that I mean armed security.
Right now, today, every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers and local authorities – and draw upon every resource available – to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. Every school will have a different solution based on its own unique situation.
Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now. And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.
These paragraphs are a dishonest version of the NRA’s vision for America. The NRAs true vision is simple: the way to prevent gun violence is with more guns. It’s the premise that leads to the the NRA conclusion that gun free school zones cause gun violence, and Right to Carry laws reduce crime: “the value of handguns for self-defense is not in how many criminals are killed, but in how often people use handguns to prevent crimes, and how often criminals don’t attack, fearing potential victims are armed.”
The Constitution does not merely permit, but is justified by, guns. The answer to gun violence is more guns. The NRA is happy to provide the training.
I think that’s an overstatement. Here’s page 2 of LaPierre’s speech:
So the analogy must is with a large bank: you don’t arm the tellers but you might have an armed guard milling about ensuring safety.By no reading is he suggesting we arm teachers.
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Borrowing from Patrick at RMG, there’s something ironic about this proposal. To some, the 2nd Amendment guards against tyranny, but the NRA worries that we fall short when it comes to being a police state.
I’ll edit my sentence.
The NRA often suggests that everyone own guns. Like the gun-free zone causing gun violence, its common for NRA advocates to say that gun ownership results in less crime. I first heard this from a friend spouting the NRA party line, not on the internet. Here it is said more clearly: “the value of handguns for self-defense is not in how many criminals are killed, but in how often people use handguns to prevent crimes, and how often criminals don’t attack, fearing potential victims are armed. ” Gun ownership and the right to carry deter crime. Guns aren’t the problem, they are the answer.
Wayne LaPierre told a CPAC audience that the 2nd Amendment is the foundation of all of our freedoms and that all rights and freedoms are nothing but “stains on a rotten piece of parchment paper in a museum somewhere” until they are “guarded by the blued steel and dry powder of a free and armed people.”
He also proclaims that he knows it is not politically correct to say so, but he doesn’t care “if their butts pucker from here to the Potomac, the Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.”
and spokesheads that teachers should be armed.
Until he denies it, assume he agrees… because his solution is always more guns.
The NRA does want everyone to own a gun. Its efforts have actually resulted in town laws requiring that residents own guns, like
this one in Utah, and this one in Georgia.
At least one town, in Texas, allows teachers to carry guns in school. There’s a lot of noise in other places advocating similar measures. You can safely put all of it at the NRA’s feet; they’ve been advocating this sort of thing for decades.
but in this specific speech, LaPierre did no propose that and one might guess that they are going to mute the universal gun ownership thing for at least another month.
One of the sources the Gropnik article points to is the material at Harvard School of Public Health. It is quite doubtful that the presence of guns makes one’s house much safer — perhaps it protects against thieves polite enough to seek invitations in advance so that one can be ready for them, guns definitely do increase the risk of suicide and homicide. That, it turns out, is because a lot of crimes are committed because stuff is convenient. Making crime a bit less convenient pays large dividends: this according to a study from the NY Police Department.
What I keep hearing from the NRA and the Right on guns is a misunderstanding of the relationship between possibility and probability.
Thus, the self-defense fantasies are entirely based on what could happen and not what has been observed to happen in the real world. The NRA claims about guns providing self-defense are thoroughly testable. How? Easy: find how many convicted criminals have been treated in hospitals for being shot by civilians. Given gun laws in red states, you’d expect a lot. How many do you find? Well, hardly any. In other words, these people are buying guns because they want to star in a TV drama.
On the other hand, by every measure, the presence of guns increases the risks of mortality to the gun owner him- or herself.
Likewise the fantasy of Mr John Q Public, expert sharp shooter, wasting the Aurora shooter by his extremely precise aim in a crowded and panicked movie theater without himself hitting innocents or sparking a gun battle with other John Q Publics. Mother Jones has done an empirical study. This has never happened in any mass shooting.
So again, overly influenced perhaps by Hollywood (!), the NRA wants to its members to star in another extremely improbable shooting event.
Possible? Perhaps. Remotely probable? Not at all.
rational. But you’re right,
In fact, I’m willing to be it’s a recurring fantasy. When I was in second grade, I remember fantasizing about our grammar school being invaded and me fighting them with a machine gun. That was 1971.
Guns are the NRA’s fetish. Just like the sex in a porno movie, the only response to sex is more sex with enough variation to suggest something new is happening.
And there you have it, folks, the NRA produces gun pornography.
During a party I was at, an argument broke out over this issue and exactly this sort of thing arose.
The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. = Wayne La Pierre
He quoted that at the head of his post precisely to underline that irony.