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NRA's Wayne LaPierre: The Only Thing That Stops a Bad Guy With a Gun Is a Good Guy With a Gun

Dec. 21, 2012 - FULL VIDEO of NRA Press Conference - Many predicted that the world would end today. They were wrong. Another prediction that proved false was that the National Rifle Association would soften its stand on gun rights as guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Au contraire, for the NRA is standing strong today by issuing a powerful statement that they are standing strong on guns and the need for them. The NRA made a gutsy and hard-truths statement this morning at their news conference in Washington, D.C.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA. He also said that "the monsters and the predators of the world" take advantage of the fact that schools and other places are "gun-free zones." As we've said here many times, gun-free zones are helpless-victim zones, deliberately made vulnerable to attack. (Read the full text of Wayne LaPierre's statement below.)

During the press conference, LaPierre said, "Why is the use of a gun when it's asked to be used to protect the president or used by the police, but bad when it's used to protect children." He challenged the media to "at least admit that it's possible" that armed guards might have been able to stop the Newtown shooting.

USA Today reports that a protester interrupted the event by holding up a red handmade sign that said "NRA Killing Our Kids, CodePink.org." (Watch the video, above.) The protester was escorted out by security he shouted, "NRA, stop killing our children." (The poor lunatic probably also thinks that the American Automobile Association is responsible for the approximately 30,000 traffic deaths every year.)

NRA LogoThe national debate about guns and how to control them hit a fever pitch after the heinous shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14. There, shooter Adam Lanza entered the school and killed 27 people plus himself. The school was a gun-free zone, and nobody there was able to counter the firepower of Lanza's weapons. The police were called, but between the time of the call to 911 and the time the police arrive is just more time for a killer such as Lanza to continue his murderous errand. Had Lanza not killed himself, it seems probable that more people would have died before the police could have taken him down.

However, had even one teacher or staff member at Sandy Hook possessed a concealed weapon that day, Adam Lanza might have been stopped and lives may have been spared. That has happened before, as in the case of Joel Myrick, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi. On Oct. 1, 1997, Myrick stopped school shooter Luke Woodham. Myrick grabbed his own .45 pistol and pointed it at Woodham to spoil his killing spree. The case of Joel Myrick is not the only example of armed citizens stopping mass killings.

Nick Meli used his concealed gun to
stop a shooter at Clackamas Mall
"The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters, people that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them," LaPierre said.

LaPierre also said that much blame for violence in America belongs to Hollywood for it's "blood-soaked films," the media, violent music videos and certain video game makers for glorifying gun play and violence.

LaPierre said Congress move to put police officers in every school in the U.S. Asa Hutchinson, a former congressman from Arkansas, reports the Wall Street Journal, will lead the NRA's effort to develop a school shield program.

Much of the anti-gun hysteria currently focuses on "assault weapons." But, points out David Kopel at WSJ.com, "What some people call 'assault weapons' function like every other normal firearm—they fire only one bullet each time the trigger is pressed. Unlike automatics (machine guns), they do not fire continuously as long as the trigger is held. They are 'semi-automatic' because they eject the empty shell case and load the next round into the firing chamber."

Of course, the average anti-gun liberal doesn't know this because they have been brainwashed by the media into believing that "assault weapons" are fully automatic and spray a lot of bullets with one pull of the trigger. They are ignorant, and they base their argument on ignorance.

"Today in America," continued Kopel, "most handguns are semi-automatics, as are many long guns, including the best-selling rifle today, the AR-15, the model used in the Newtown shooting. Some of these guns look like machine guns, but they do not function like machine guns."

The media today is renewing its efforts to tell Americans that the NRA is "playing on people's fears." To be honest, however, the opposite is true. The media and the anti-gun advocates play on fear by portraying guns as the bogeyman. The NRA and its membership, in contrast, knows that guns give law abiding citizens protection against the murderous madmen among us. Responsible gun ownership makes one less fearful, because responsible gun owners know that they will have a better chance to defend themselves than they would without a weapon. The fear of guns that keeps so many anti-gun Liberals awake at night is really a fear of other human beings, people that they do not trust to their own judgment. And so, as with so many other social issues, the Liberals' only strategy is to deny people their freedoms. Freedom to defend one's self included, and be damned, they say. It is a position that rests in ignorance, fear and self-righteousness.

Related:

BELOW: FULL TEXT of Wayne LaPierre's statement on Dec. 21, 2012.

NRA PRESS CONFERENCE
12/21/2012 (source: http://home.nra.org/#/home)

The National Rifle Association's 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the families of Newtown, Connecticut ... who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime.
Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

Now, we must speak ... for the safety of our nation's children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. 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? Think 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!

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day. And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn't planning his attack on a school he's already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark?

A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

And the fact is, that wouldn't even begin to address the much larger and more lethal criminal class: Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade.

So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you've got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.

And here's another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

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?

Then there's the blood-soaked slasher films like "American Psycho" and "Natural Born Killers" that are aired like propaganda loops on "Splatterdays" and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it "entertainment."

But is that what it really is? Isn't fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.

And throughout it all, too many in our national media ... their corporate owners ... and their stockholders ... act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators. Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away.

The media call semi-automatic firearms "machine guns" — they claim these civilian semi-automatic firearms are used by the military, and they tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers ... when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don't know what they're talking about!

Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban — or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people — will protect us where 20,000 others have failed!

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away ... or a minute away?

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?

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn't a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn't a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won't be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools?

They're our kids. They're our responsibility. And it's not just our duty to protect them — it's our right to protect them.

You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

Will you at least admit it's possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America's gun owners that you're willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year's budget, and scrapped "Secure Our Schools" policing grants in next year's budget.

With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can't afford to put a police officer in every school? Even if they did that, politicians have no business — and no authority — denying us the right, the ability, or the moral imperative to protect ourselves and our loved ones from harm.

Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America's schools safer — relying on the brave men and women of America's police force.

The budget of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now.

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work — and by that I mean armed security.

Right now, today, every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers and local authorities — and draw upon every resource available — to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. Every school will have a different solution based on its own unique situation.

Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now. And the National Rifle Association, as America's preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.

Our training programs are the most advanced in the world. That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now. We did it for the nation's defense industries and military installations during World War II, and we'll do it for our schools today.

The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.

Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson will lead this effort as National Director of the National School Shield Program, with a budget provided by the NRA of whatever scope the task requires. His experience as a U.S. Attorney, Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security will give him the knowledge and expertise to hire the most knowledgeable and credentialed experts available anywhere, to get this program up and running from the first day forward.

If we truly cherish our kids more than our money or our celebrities, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible and the security that is only available with a properly trained — armed — good guy.

Under Asa's leadership, our team of security experts will make this the best program in the world for protecting our children at school, and we will make that program available to every school in America free of charge.

That's a plan of action that can, and will, make a real, positive and indisputable difference in the safety of our children — starting right now.

There'll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, this is the day for decisive action.

We can't wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can't lose precious time debating legislation that won't work. We mustn't allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us. We must act now.

For the sake of the safety of every child in America, I call on every parent, every teacher, every school administrator and every law enforcement officer in this country to join us in the National School Shield Program and protect our children with the only line of positive defense that's tested and proven to work.

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