National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press this morning to double down on the unpopular things he said during his disastrous Friday press conference, which featured a proposal to place guards with guns in every school in America as a means of preventing incidents like the Newtown shooting. He seemed unfazed by the public’s mostly negative reaction to the idea, telling host David Gregory, “If it’s crazy to call for putting police and armed security in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy. [Ed. note: You got it.] I think the American people think it’s crazy not to do it. It’s the one thing that would keep people safe.”
One thing LaPierre definitely does not think would keep people safe is fewer or less powerful firearms. “Dianne Feinstein, she can do whatever she wants to with magazines — it’s not going to make any kid safer,” he said in reference to the senator’s pledge to introduce new weapons legislation in January. “I know that this town wants to argue about gun control; I don’t think it’s what will work.” He went on to insist that “monsters” determined to commit mass shootings would simply “evade” restrictions on semiautomatic weapons and cited Columbine, which took place while the now-expired Federal Assault Weapons Ban was still in effect, as an example of the uselessness of gun control. When asked about Columbine’s armed guard, who exchanged fire with the shooters but was unable to stop them, LaPierre blamed insufficiently aggressive protocols.
As he did on Friday, LaPierre suggested that the cause of gun violence is not guns but the “completely and totally collapsed” mental health system, which has failed to provide “a national database of lunatics” designed to keep people with a history of dangerous mental illness from purchasing weapons. He also complained that the federal government was not doing enough to enforce laws preventing convicted felons from possessing guns. “If you’re a felon and you walk into a gun store and you try to buy a gun, and they go, ‘Oh, you’re a felon, and we’re going to turn you down,’ they let you walk out, and they don’t prosecute you,” he said. “If you want to control violent criminals, take them off the street.” Throughout the entire interview, LaPierre maintained that increasing restrictions on gun sales to the general public would do nothing to decrease shootings.
