arm guard

Wednesday Evening News Roundup

Wayne LaPierre

When the NRA announced that they were going to hold a press conference, I stated on the air that I believed there was nothing that the NRA (National Rifle Association) had to say that I was interested in. I could not imagine their saying anything that was thoughtful, intelligent or helpful about the situation. Unfortunately, I was right. It seems to me that Wayne LaPierre, with his same tired clichés, considers the American people stupid.

Let’s, just for a second, go with his suggestion that the way to fix the problem would be to have armed guards in elementary schools. Let’s, just for a moment, assume that we can get state, federal and local funding for armed guards in schools. Let’s also assume that we can figure out how many armed guards we need. I suspect that in small schools, we would only want to have one or two armed guards and that in bigger schools we’d like to have more. Now, let’s add to this mix a gunman. By all accounts, the gunman in Newtown shooting was intelligent. He may have been, and probably was, mentally disturbed, but he was intelligent. He knew that the school was on lockdown. He broke a window in order to get past the locked doors. Why would we assume that the gunman wouldn’t plan on taking out the arm guard first? Why would we assume that the gunman wouldn’t plan for the armed guard? The armed guard will not be Dirty Harry, Rambo or Jack Reacher. The armed guard is not gonna be an ex-Special Forces elite paratrooper. It’s going to be some guy. It’ll be some guy with modest training who will be surprised by the attack. Remember in Tucson, Arizona, when Representative Gabby Giffords was shot, there was someone in the crowd who was carrying a weapon but did not think he could get off a clear shot without hitting civilians. During the shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, one of the first ones on the scene was a 20-year police veteran who got off multiple shots but did not hit the shooter once. For his troubles, he was shot multiple times and, thankfully, survived. Let’s go back to 1966 when Charles Whitman shot and killed 11 people, wounding over 30 others. Two police officers confronted Whitman on the observation deck of the University of Texas Tower. One officer, from a distance of approximately 50 feet, discharged his gun six times. He didn’t hit Whitman once.

Just because you have a gun, just because you’ve been trained, does not mean that in the moment of crisis you’re going to be able to use that weapon to stop an assailant. Wayne LaPierre isn’t simply crazy. He is a lobbyist. He wants you to buy something. He wants you to understand that guns are the only answer to violence. He wants you to be afraid. He wants you to buy a gun. By the way, don’t buy just one, because one is never enough. Buy several. (more…)