For a start, LaPierre, after calling a press conference, refused to answer to any questions by the media.
Next, he indicated that the rise in gun related homicides in the US was a result of conspiring media and video game-makers.
Here’s a gem from him, quoted by the New York Post: “Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize gun owners.”
Nobody did that, at least following the Sandy Hook tragedy, but people did question lack of control over gun access and the reasoning behind freely owning assault rifles and weapons meant for mass killing, as opposed to self defense. But such a comment from a person who receives a million dollar salary and handles PR is priceless. More so, at a press conference.
Here’s another gem from the million-dollar PR man: “And here’s another dirty little truth the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games.”
We did a little research on the Internet and found and posted the comparative chart on this page of gun related homicides in U.S., Canada, Australia, and England&Wales. The 2006 chart, which the Juristat declares is from data sourced from Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Homicide Survey; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; Australian Institute of Criminology; and England & Wales Home Office.
People in all of the countries in the chart play the same videogames, and have almost the same media, the only difference is that the other three countries have gun control where people need to provide a rational basis for owning guns and need to register them.
However, gun control doesn’t prevent Canada from having one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, but you only need to see the chart to understand the huge difference in gun related murders between the two countries sharing the same continent.
Besides the media and videogame-makers, the country’s lawmakers too had a share of LaPierre’s bile. Here’s his take: “Politicians pass laws for gun free zones, and in doing so, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”
So, what’s the solution according to LaPierre? He says, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
But it’s really a scope for providing new jobs, something the media missed out upon entirely. He said, “With all the money in the federal budget, can’t we afford to put a police officer in every single school? …There are millions (of retired service personnel) we could deploy them to protect our kids now.”
So, there’s your hint to new jobs across the country, when the federal budget can’t even support full-scale teaching staff at most schools.
The problem is neither with guns or gun owners, but in effective checks and balances to ensure that guns remain in the hands of sane people, as much as possible. And that guns meant primarily for war are kept in war zones.