Tag: press conference

Michael Steele was once the Chairman for the RNC, and after hearing what the NRA had to say in today’s press conference, Michael Steele said, “I don’t even know where to begin. As a supporter of the Second Amendment and a supporter of the NRA, even though I’m not a member of the NRA, I just found it very haunting and very disturbing that we are a country now that are talking about arming our teachers and principals in classrooms. What does that say about us?

“The idea that the message, the top line message coming out of this press conference is, ‘lets put a gun in the hands of our teachers in the classrooms,’ I do not think that’s where rank and file NRA members expected this to go to.”

Steele was a guest on MSNBC Live, and his disgust with what the NRA had to say in their press conference was apparent.

Wayne Lapierre, the CEO and Exec. VP of the NRA began his press conference by expressing his and his organization’s sorrow over what happened in Newtown Connecticut, where twenty children and six teachers were killed by a crazed gunman. After spending about five seconds acknowledging the horror of the shooting, Lapierre began pointing the fingers of blame at everyone else, while calling for even more guns… in our schools.

Lapierre blamed the media, the entertainment industry, the media, the politicians and the media. He even showed a video of a game where someone with a gun is shown shooting kids at their school. “It’s called Kindergarten Killers” Lapierre said, failing to see the obvious fact that even in the game, the player was using a gun.

“As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It’s now time for us to assume responsibility for our schools.” Laierre went on,”the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Trying to make his case for more guns on our streets, Lapierre points out that the President is protected by Secret Service with guns, and that the military uses guns to protect this nation. He then asked, “why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect the President of our country or the police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in our schools?”

The NRA’s solution to stopping these of mass murders in the United States is putting more guns in the hands of the average civilian. Lapierre even mentions the name of the Sandy Hook shooter, saying, “what if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary school last Friday, he could have been confronted by qualified armed security. Would you at least admit it’s possible that twenty six little kids, that twenty six innocent lives might have been spared that day?”

But this is an old argument from the NRA.

“It is old news,” says John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence. In his appearance on News Nation, Mr. Rosenthal points out that “there were two armed guards at Columbine High School. They were outgunned by the shooters with assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips.” Rosenthal continued, “the FBI was even outgunned at Waco by David Koresh with a Tennessee made Barrett 50 caliber assault rifle that he blew up a tank with an killed police officers.”

Mr. Rosenthal concluded that Congress should “find their backbone, stand up the the dangerous NRA policies and enact an assault weapons ban and a background check for all gun sales.”

It seems that the NRA is foolishly choosing to disregard this fact: that the U.S.,accounts for 5% of the world’s population, but owns 50% of the world’s guns. With this knowledge, calling for more guns seem pointless.

Watch the video below.