It took them exactly one week after the Newtown tragedy to come up with things to say, but the NRA finally held their much ballyhooed press conference Friday to let all of America know that guns are totally awesome so don't stop buying them, please.
NRA Head Honcho Wayne LaPierre joined our very own Dennis Baxley in calling for armed people to walk around in schools.
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He blamed the media for putting the Newtown killings on "guns" and not focusing on mental health issues and violent video games.
LaPierre's money quote was that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
Because our world is not at all complex. It's a world of good guys and bad guys. Like in the movies!
LaPierre's notion of having Soldiers of Fortune patrolling our schools is neat and all. After all, the President has his own security detail. Because people are trying to murder him every single day... JUST LIKE YOUR CHILDREN!
Yea, let's dial it down with the "if only those people had guns, that bad guy would never have killed all those people" horseshit.
The NRA's Good Guys With Guns presser was really just a giant lobby trying desperately to stop the bleeding (even though gun sales have soared in the wake of the tragedy because... 'MERICA!).
Here are the facts:
-Schools are safe. Period. The statistics speak for themselves. Your kids are safe. What happened in Newtown, and Virginia Tech, and the Colorado movie theater, and other massacres of the like was definitely a mental health issue. But they were mostly a People With Guns That Shouldn't Have Had Fucking Access To Guns issue. What LaPierre and Baxley would love to see happen is for people to freak their shit over Newtown and start hiring armed "good guys" to walk around your kids' school. And who would get paid for this idea? The NRA! BRILLIANT!
-People with guns don't actually stop bad guys. The number one argument the NRA and gun-humping trogs love to point out is that armed people will stop bad guys with guns. But, this too is horseshit.
We'd like to think we all turn into Dirty Harry when confronted by a maniac with a gun bent on doing people harm. But the reality is, we'd all turn into Fredo in The Godfather when his father is gunned down by rival gangsters, shitting our pants and dropping our gun . Or worse, being added to the body count.
As for our state:
-According to Florida's Vital Statistics Annual Report, Florida has the 15th-highest homicide rate in the nation, with guns accounting for the overwhelming majority of the killings. Duval County will finish the year with more than 100 homicides. That's more murders by firearm in a year than in all of Britain, a nation of 63 million people. Florida also has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, thanks to guns.
Meanwhile, as we pointed out yesterday, Rick Scott has been mum on the issue, only saying this on CNN this week:
"I think the right thing that we ought to do is what you have been doing and that's respect these families and this community. Second, what I've done in this state is ask every one of our schools to go back and look at our safety precautions and let's make sure every parent feels comfortable."
Let's not say shit, but let's totally make parents feel safe by looking at our safety plans. Just look at them. Good plan, Rick.
"The NRA is going to bring all its knowledge, all its dedication and all its resources to develop a model National School Shield emergency response program for every school in America that wants it," LaPierre said in his presser today.
The bottom line is the NRA is basing their fantastic notion of Super School Gun Warriors on fear and horseshit. And here in Florida, they're getting a lot of help from idiotic gun laws and Governor McSilentPants.
But hey, no worries. Bullet proof backpacks, y'all!
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