Quote of the day

Robert Parry wrote:

If one follows the “logic” of the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre, the United States should become an armed camp with armored-up police carrying high-powered weapons stationed at virtually every location where children might congregate and where a crazy person might show up with a semi-automatic assault rifle.

After all, why stop at protecting schools? A mentally unstable individual could just as easily walk into a shopping mall at Christmas and murder kids waiting to talk to Santa Claus or enter a theater showing a Disney film and open fire on the tiny movie-goers or stroll onto a field where children are playing soccer and empty a 100-round magazine.

f we are to really protect the children as LaPierre suggests, we should have armor-encased SWAT officers at literally every event where there are kids. It clearly wouldn’t do to just have some donut-eating cops with simple sidearms. All they would do is provide initial target practice for a gunman with his Bushmaster AR-15.

No, we would need “good guys with guns” at least equal in firepower to the “bad guys with guns.” That is, if we were to apply LaPierre’s reasoning as expressed at the NRA’s news conference on Friday, belatedly responding to the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six teachers in Newtown, Connecticut, a week earlier.

So, rather than enact commonsense gun-control laws that could begin ratcheting down America’s crazy arms race, LaPierre recommends escalating the arms race by turning pretty much the entire country into security zones, the sort that U.S. airports have become, except at airports the passengers are not allowed to carry guns.

It might be surprising but one can locate a bit of symmetry among the various kinds of reactionary thought. Some — the neoliberals — want people to confront a police state so that prices may be free. Some — gun rights fundamentalists — want people to confront a police state so that guns may circulate freely. A pox on both kinds.

Related articles

• NRA CEO Refutes Bob Costas, Says Kasandra Perkins Needed A Gun To Defend Against Jovan Belcher (huffingtonpost.com)
• NRA says more guns could have saved Jovan Belcher’s girlfriend (tv.msnbc.com)
• NRA president suggests Jovan Belcher’s girlfriend should’ve been armed (rawstory.com)
• Esquire:Gun Owners Need A New Leader (esquire.com)
• NRA: Despite Living In House Full Of Guns, More Guns Could Have Saved Kasandra Perkins (wonkette.com)
• NRA CEO: Belcher’s Girlfriend Could Be Alive If She Was Gun Owner (washington.cbslocal.com)
• The NRA is likely to be disappointed (maddowblog.msnbc.com)
• NRA Suggests a Police State (consortiumnews.com)
• Armed Guards in Schools? The NRA Wants a Police State (alternet.org)
• National Rifle Association: More Guns Could Have Saved Javon Belcher’s Girlfriend (thinkprogress.org)