In
his press conference on the Sandy Hook elementary school slaughter of the
innocents today, Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) executive
vice president, gave new meaning to the term American exceptionalism, the theory
that there is something inherently different about the United States from other
nations.
LaPierre
blamed violent video games, movies and other entertainments for the large
number of guns death in the United States.
But
Canadians have ready access to the same violent amusements. The French have
access to them. The English, Japanese, Koreans, Spanish have access to them. In
fact you can find a plethora of violent games and movies in every westernized
industrial country of the world.
But
only in the United States is there a high level of gun deaths. In fact, 80% of
all deaths from guns in the 23 populous, high-income countries of the world
occur in the United States. We have both the highest number of gun deaths and
the highest rate of gun deaths.
That
certainly makes us exceptional—but are we exceptionally
susceptible to suggestion? Exceptionally given to playing out fantasies?
Exceptionally stupid? Do an exceptionally
large number of our citizens have violent tendencies?
No,
no, no and no.
What
we are is exceptionally inundated with guns and exceptionally lacking in laws
to control their registration and use.
LaPierre,
whose job is to be the chief salesperson for gun manufacturers, proposes an
interesting and very expensive way to prevent future Sandy Hook massacres: have
government pay to place an armed police officer in every single school in the
country. I assume he means private schools as well as public schools.
The
solution is absurd for several reasons. Let’s start with cost: right now public
education is underfunded. We’re talking about cutting all kinds of government programs
that help the poor, children and senior citizens. Our roads and bridges are in
disrepair. Mass transit is being cut in many cities. We have to shore up our
shorelines to protect our citizens from another Sandy or Katrina. How do LaPierre
and the NRA expect us to pay for all that extra security? I guess he doesn’t
care since his industry is going to benefit from its plan to militarize schools
because it will likely require the purchase of more firearms and more
ammunition.
And
what do we do about malls? Movie theatres? Churches? Universities? Health
clubs? Hospitals? Public buildings? Over the past few years, there have been
mass murders at all of these locations. Many of them already have police
officers or armed security on detail. Evidently there weren’t enough in place.
Then
there are the killers who operate on the run, like the Washington D.C. sniper
or the western Pennsylvania nutcase who went out hunting ethnic and racial minorities.
Do we place a policeman at every intersection and every quarter mile of
freeway?
If we
were to take the NRA’s proposal seriously, we would become a police state in
which there would be a security force on every block and in every building. And
even then we wouldn’t be safe from the proliferation of guns and weak gun
control laws.
There
are two characteristics that mass murderers have in common. First of all, they
are all crazy. There is no way to guarantee we can keep guns out of the hands
of all the nuts, although every other industrialized nation seems to do a
pretty good job at it. But stiffer gun ownership requirements, a longer wait
before one is able to purchase a gun, requirements that gun owners get licenses
like drivers of automobiles, a more extensive FBI database of criminals and the
mentally ill—all of these gun control initiatives would make it much harder for
the nuts to get their hands on firearms.
The
other characteristic shared by many of the mass murderers is their use of
semi-automatic assault weapons. It makes sense to ban these weapons. Of course that would take sales away from LaPierre’s
clients, the gun manufacturers. And we can’t have that, can we?
Lobbyists
for industries never want to regulate their industries, and they often give
reasons that defy logic and stretch the truth. But in this press conference,
the NRA has hit a historically slimy and self-serving low.