Anthea Butler

December 21, 2012

Why is it every time a shooting happens,the NRA response is to encourage the public to buy more guns? In comments made December 21 on the shootings in Newtown, NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre encouraged the establishment of a a “National School Shield Program” to have an armed guard at every school, and  vilified video games and the media for perpetuating violence. Blaming anything and everyone except guns, LaPierre’s appearance was both comical and maniacal at the same time. If this is what the NRA waited a week to say, they could have waited forever to speak. To add insult and injury to the speech, while the press watched LaPierre’s free commercial for more guns, three people were shot and killed in a rural area of Pennsylvania, including a woman putting up Christmas decorations for children at her church.

If this does not wake America up to the fact that not only are guns big business, but that the NRA is invested in people remaining fearful enough to buy their products and support their organization, nothing will. It is very clear that the vitrol and vehemence of the speech today by Mr. LaPierre shows that the fear and determination of those who “cling to their guns and God” without care for those who have died, is a disease. How the NRA can think that they are “the good guys with a gun” is beyond me.

As a professor, I don’t want an armed guard in every school and classroom in the nation. Many schools have security already. Making places of learning prisons only extends the prison industrial complex that feeds the need for gun play and gun power. Meanwhile, families in Newtown continue the grim task of burying their loved ones, listening to the toll of the bells, while a self-righteous NRA leader pontificates about bringing more guns into schools, and about the “safety of our nation’s children”.

If  Wayne LaPierre and the NRA are the ones to protect our children, they are doomed.

Tags: Anthea Butler, Guns, Newtown, NRA, Sandy Hook School, Wayne LaPierre

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