Salon For 21 years, LaPierre has been the executive VP and chief political strategist of the National Rifle Association. The blood of the victims of the Aurora, Colorado shooting is on his hands.Wayne's no dummy. He knows the best way to mitigate the effect of an accusation like "blood on the hands," is to first and more frequently accuse his opponents of it.This is exactly what he's done.
Of course, LaPierre didn’t pull the trigger, but he’s the NRA’s hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to oppose any kind of gun control and the nation’s most vocal advocate of gun owner rights.
The NRA not only lobbies on behalf of “stand your ground” laws, but also offers insurance to members to pay for the legal costs of shooting people in “self-defense.”
James Holmes, the man who walked into the Aurora movie theater, killed 12 people and wounded 58 others, is no doubt deranged. He’s not alone. There are lots of crazy people around. But if we make it easy for them to obtain guns, they are more likely to translate their psychological problems into dangerous and deadly anti-social behavior.
LaPierre’s job (which he’s held for 21 years) is to make it easier for people to buy and use guns. And so far he’s been very successful.
It is no accident that the United States ranks first in the world — by a wide margin — in gun-related civilian deaths and injuries. Compared with every other democracy, we have the most guns and the weakest gun laws.
How many times have we heard this from gun-rights fanatics? How often have they attempted to silence us with the nonsense that we're "dancing in the blood" of the victims.
Mr. E. J. Dionne's Washington Post editorial of a few days ago described it best.
Nobody who points to the inadequacy of our flood-control policies or mistakes by the Army Corps of Engineers is accused of "exploiting" the victims of a deluge. Nobody who criticizes a botched response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to a natural disaster is accused of "exploiting" the victims of a hurricane or a tornado. Nobody who lays part of the blame for an accident on insufficient regulation of, say, the airlines or coal mining is accused of "exploiting" the accident's victims.
No, it's only where a gun massacre is concerned that an absolute and total gag rule is imposed on any thinking beyond the immediate circumstances of the catastrophe. God forbid that we question even a single tenet of the theology of firearms.
What's your opinion? Do you think La Pierre will be able to continue getting away with such flagrant trickery? Do you think the public might have had just about enough?
Please leave a comment.
