Linn Washington, Jr.: "Wayne LaPierre and the NRA: Keeping America Wacky and Violent" @ This Can't Be Happening!

Listening to NRA chief Wayne LaPierre lash out at any notion of gun control during that staunch gun advocate’s first public appearance in the wake of the horrific Connecticut school shooting triggered flashbacks to defiance I once heard from 1960s-era segregationist George Wallace.

Wallace rode a racist declaration from his 1963 governorship inauguration in Alabama to campaigns for the U.S. presidency years later: “Segregation now…Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever!”

LaPierre’s refusal to embrace any reform of America’s gun laws exhibits defiance similar to arch-segregationist George Wallace -- interestingly a man forced from the public political arena in 1972 by a gunman whose unsuccessful assassination attempt left Wallace paralyzed from the waist-down.

The bluster and bullshit of both LaPierre and the late Gov. Wallace are/were astounding in the extreme, each evidencing a pathological inability to accept the fact that their respective defenses of the indefensible were and are not acceptable.

George Wallace waged war against extending full civil rights to blacks while NRA head Wayne LaPierre continues to wage war against any gun control regardless of how moderate the proposed control measures are.

LaPierre and the NRA have even opposed moderate, civil measures like simply requiring gun owners to report lost and stolen weapons.

LaPierre bolsters his bluster about placing more armed guards in schools as a massacre-minimizing measure with a sophistic contention that other public buildings, like courts, have armed guards for protection.

Yet, on reporting lost/stolen weapons, LaPierre reverses his logic seeing no symmetry between government requirements to report stolen automobiles and proposed government requirements to report a stolen weapon.

As a life-long gun enthusiast/owner I don’t think a requirement to report stolen weapons is onerous or an assault on the Second Amendment as LaPierre proclaims when shooting off his mouth.

And, this more-guns advocate apparently ignores the fact that an armed guard assigned to Columbine High School didn’t stop the 1999 massacre there that left 15 dead and 23 wounded. That on-duty policeman shot at but missed one of the two Columbine teen shooters.

LaPierre and his conservative lobbyist/legislative confederates are responsible for such stupid laws as allowing students to carry guns on college campuses.

As a university professor who has received explicit death threats from students disgruntled about their failures to perform academically, I think putting guns into the hands of often emotionally-charged and/or immature students is dangerous…comparable to NRA-sanctioned laws in some states allowing persons to carry guns into bars awash with fight-inducing alcoholic beverages...


For the rest of this article by LINN WASHINGTON, JR. in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to:www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1484
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