The "Answer" from the NRA

by Penigma,

Friday, Wayne La Pierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, suggested the solution to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School (and all other school shootings) was to put a police officer at every single school in the United States.

I do not try to assign motives to people's actions very much and so won't do (much of) it here. 

Instead I will point out a few realities.  

First, there are about 133,000 public and private (K-12) schools in the US.   Putting one police officer, full-time, at each school, if we assume a police person makes about $80,000/year in salary and benefits (an estimate which could easily be low), will cost roughly 10.6 Billion (with a B) per year.  $10.6 Billion.  You are talking about using 133,000 police officers to stop about 3 people per year, or a rate of 40,000 police people PER assailant.  That is an extraordinarily inefficient use of money and manpower.  By the way, that figure doesn't even touch colleges - which do have their own policing forces YET have school shootings.. gosh.

Second, any such posting (for the police person) would be B O R I N G, boring.  They would hate it.  It would be mocked by their fellow officers because the role did nothing 99.9997% of the time.  It would probably be staffed either by a rolling assignment (e.g. one day a month an 'unlucky' officer would need to go there) - making the person going inefficient even more because there would be no continuity and likely little rapport with staff OR it would be staffed by someone who hated the job every day.  It would be a crap job. 

Third,  and most importantly, no defense is perfect.   Any defense is intended to be a deterrent at best and nothing more.  Any assailant most likely would plan for how to deal with a single police officer, and most likely, would succeed because they would have the element of surprise.  Air Marshals to stop hijackings worked because hijackers were a. unarmed and b. could not tell which passenger was the Marshal, so they could not (adequately) plan for taking out the Marshal first.  This would not be true at a school.  The police officer would almost certainly be in uniform, even if not, the police officer could be identified by simply "casing" the school before-hand.  Consequently, as a single person, the police officer would almost certainly be "overcome."  In some cases not of course, but the point is, it wouldn't stop the attacks.  It might not even be a meaningful deterrent and might well result in another lost life (and gun in the hands of the assailant).  

A solution might be to put TWO cops in each school, but then you're talking about $21 BILLION per year for this.  $21 BILLION to stop three people.  Furthermore, unlike the "air marshal" scenario, assailants are almost always FAR more heavily armed than a patrolman/woman.  There have been shootings which continued even after police engaged the shooters because the shooters had much more powerful weaponry.   The assailants plan for how to deal with the police, they have little regard for their own lives (many plan to commit suicide at some point) and so have no concern about killing a policeman first or being killed by one so long as they kill a few other first.  The idea of a single cop per school simply isn't workable, it's proven to be nearly completely ineffective already.  It's not a solution.   

In fact, it's ludicrous.

So, Mr. La Pierre's "suggestion" is, potentially, a 10 to 20 Billion dollar big government, wasteful unworkable  expense.  It is to teach our kids to be afraid, to use guns as shields, to embrace police presence as an every day mechanism of safety and fact of life.  We talk about, even joke about a bit, the failure of nations which are reduced to having cop with a machine gun on every street corner, do we really want to become Mexico ourselves?  Is the next solution putting an M1 tank on every street corner when this doesn't work.  There was a cop at Virginia Tech too and there were two cops at Columbine. 

Mr. La Pierre, an avidly anti-government hawk, wants to spend $100-200 Billion dollars over the next decade to stop 30 people.  That's half as much as we spent  on the Iraq War and likely would be even LESS effective.    

I said I'd not talk about motives much, and I won't do it much.  It seems to me, though, that this proposal is hypocrisy of the highest order.  It's a wasteful, horrid solution of more guns to stop violence.  It is this quite simply because, it seems to me, Mr. La Pierre himself, and his ardent supporters in the NRA cannot bring themselves to admit their psychology of loving guns, of imagining whipping out their trusty six-shooter and stopping Bad Bart, is just mythology.  More to the point, it is in fact part of the problem.  Their (our) testosterone rush in shooting, owning, carrying firearms, provides an impetus for a very small number of people to dream about and for even a smaller number to act out, exacting 'revenge' upon a society which they fear and feel wronged them.  

This facet, this love of guns and imaginations of violence is the core of our national nightmare.  Mr. La Pierre can't face this or his whole house of cards falls down because his past proposals have been so extreme, so uncompromising in the promotion of guns as a solution to all social ills.  So now he proposes a big spending, big government police state as the solution.   Something the NRA in past stood in staunch opposition against.   

Someone find a clock, it truly IS 1984.

UPDATE: 

Since making this (and a couple other) ridiculous suggestions Friday, Mr. LaPierre appeared on NBC Sunday Morning to change his toon (his first line of defense of guns, guns, and more guns having been roundly blasted for being, well, absurd).  His solution now, enforce the laws already on the books.  Yes, those same laws he adamantly opposed having enacted, the same laws he says are unconstitutional.  He would not answer any question directly (the art of politics in play - answer what you want, not what you were asked), but when pressed directly by David Gregory whether he'd allow for background screening of the mentally ill or support closing the private gun show loophole, despite having in the preceeding sentence said he wanted better "mental health care", he refused to agree to such checks, such screenings.  He continues to refuse to ANYTHING which would in any way limit access to anyone except, it seems, felons.  Mr. LaPierre wants to ensure felons are prosecuted for trying to get a gun.  THAT's his solution.  Mr. Gregory rightly pointed out that would have done nothing for Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza wasn't a felon.  No matter, Mr. LaPierre pressed on - suggesting we have "20,000" gun laws, one more won't matter.

Two things in answer to that, if it won't matter, why are you so adamantly against it?  I think the answer is you KNOW it will cut down on gun sales, and THAT's the real issue.  Wayne LaPierre and the NRA are now nothing but paid lobbyists of gun manufacturers.  They gin up fear, they talk about fearing blacks, the government, muslims, criminals, anything to coas the fearful into buying yet MORE guns.

Second, Mr. LaPierre knows full well those "20,000" gun laws refer to permit requirements, licensing rules, municipality ordinances and the like, most of which have nothing at all (in fact virtually all of which have nothing at all) to do wtih limiting the purchase of a gun to someone mentally competent, to require states to provide data to the background checking database, something Mr. LaPierre advocated to NBC should happen, but opposes entirely having happen at every other turn. 

The NRA knows such laws will prove that a. law abiding folks who are mentally stable will NOT need to fear the government because it will show the government has a limited interest and b. that the goernment, the federal government can put limits, consitutionally, on the posession of firearms, including screening potential buyers and THAT is what the NRA fears most.  They fear that their clients, some of their members, in fact will start showing up as no longer eligible to purchase, maybe even mentally unsound, and sales will be affected.  Those who fear Obama will learn they have little to fear, so they won't binge buy, and those who are kooks, like Adam Lanza's mom, might be prevented from doing so.

So they lie about what they want (like wanting the current laws enforced), they bring up absurdities, like putting more guns in schools, asking teachers to become sherrifs, and talking about felon gun applications as a solution to mass shootings rarely IF EVER committed by felons.  They ignore the culture of guns and violence they advocate, code words like "stopping power", 2nd Amendment remedies and the like.  They ignore their complicity in the problem and are even so craven as to be willing to institute a police state exactly like the one they fear, just so long as the cash register keeps ringing.  That's the NRA of today, that's what they've become.  When all you care about is the falling of hammers, everyone looks like a sale, no mtter how many may die.