Yesterday’s press conference by the National Rifle Association in the wake of the Sandy Hook killings was widely agreed to have been a media relations disaster – although it remains to be seen how it played with the NRA’s several million members.
Wayne La Pierre, the head of the organisation, had been expected to strike a conciliatory tone, and perhaps even agree to some restrictions on the sale of large magazines of ammunition.
Instead, he defiantly blamed the Sandy Hook shootings – which claimed the lives of 20 young children and six teachers – on everything but the guns for which his organisation lobbies. The film Natural Born Killers got a shout-out, as it often does, as did violent videogames:
Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?
(After the conference, BuzzFeed’s John Hermann tracked down Kindergarten Killers. It was a homemade Flash game posted on Newgrounds in 2002, and soon deleted at the request of the site’s users.)
LaPierre then argued that anyone calling for gun-free schools was in fact abetting mass killers:
Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk. How have our nation’s priorities gotten so far out of order?
Give a gift subscription to the New Statesman this Christmas from just £49Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security.
We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.
Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!
Both his tone and his facts immediately came under criticism. The Violence Policy Center noted that two guards had been present at Columbine, site of a school shooting on 20 April 1999 which left 15 dead. And the US president Ronald Reagan was wounded by a gunman in 1981 despite being surrounded by secret service agents (at least one with an Uzi).
Newsweek’s David Frum had the best response to LaPierre’s argument: simply listing all the places that shootings have happened. Can America really put federal agents in them all?
We need a federal agent in every rural church. foxnews.com/us/2012/12/21/…
— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 22, 2012
We need a federal agent in every nail parlor. elkridge.patch.com/articles/victi…
— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 22, 2012
We need a federal agent at every bus station. therepublic.com/view/story/88e…
— davidfrum (@davidfrum) December 22, 2012
(You can read the full list here. Warning: it’s long.)
Still, at least Wayne LaPierre got something right:
Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow morning: “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything!” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools.
But since when did the word “gun” automatically become a bad word?
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