Easily Debunking NRA's Wayne LaPierre's Lies

"Happy Mother's Day. You're child's been shot and killed."

This is life today in America and around the world. Except America has chosen it outright. We have argued it's a right. We have argued it's just as important as Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, or is even greater than that.

We have got to lay to rest this nonsense about how:

"Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun."

First off, it's not true. Did we not only recently see how a young black man stopped a bad guy with a gun... with his bare hands?

Not that President Donald Trump would mention that in his racistly disparaged beliefs. Weren't there also two Marines in Belgium who did the same on a train just not that long ago?

Yes.

Certainly not the preferred method of going up against a gun, but it doesn't only take a gun, or a good guy.

After all, two guys rob a place, once starts shooting people, couldn't the bad guy suddenly go, "Hey, WTF?" And just shoot his partner because he may be a robber but not a murderer?

Yes.

There are some very serious realities that are being completely ignored in that soundbite pro gun nuts so dearly love to reiterate like (not smart parrots) but dumb mimics. You'll never hear reality (stated below) from these people, because they are in love with their guns and their hero worship complex.

MANY people who carry guns ARE looking to get to use them someday. That is really not what you want in a person carrying because they view it romantically. They see it more as a toy, entertainment, through a kind of faux hero syndrome filter. Not as what it is, a killing tool. Not as a machine of death, as it was designed to be. (oddly enough, they also deny that, much to the offense and confusion of gun manufacturers who put a lot of money and research into just that end)

MANY people who carry guns are carrying out of fear and will NOT use them in a real life shooter scenario unless their life is directly at risk. It just makes them feel safe. To pull a gun in a real scenario takes far more than they are willing to experience, and do not experience UNTIL they are faced with having to pull or not to pull a gun out and face down someone shooting at them. It's all fun and games until someone really is about to get hurt. And they know, they may miss entirely as they get gunned down.

MANY people who carry guns are not trained or not well trained. Sometimes not trained is better as they won't pull their gun when faced with death. A semi trained person can be a danger both to themselves and to others. When you can buy a gun and get a license to carry (or not and still carry), with no training whatsoever, you...YOU are the danger to society.

MANY people who carry guns will NOT ever pull out their gun and use it, UNLESS maybe directly threatened in a mass shooting and possibly, not even then. Facing down the reality of death evokes fight or flight, or FREEZE.

MANY people who carry guns will miss if they do pull and shoot, they will instead hit bystanders, never hitting the shooter at all. They will actually add to the death toll, the maiming count and in the end, the shooter could potentially get away or kill the "good" guy with a gun too, anyway. Effectively having helped in killing or harming as many as possible, which was the shooter's purpose in the first place. And how does THAT help the situation.

Let's not forget, some carring and pulling could potentially be shot by police when they arrive. Especially if you are black or a minority or look like a bad guy, merely from your dress. What if you're Muslim? Or just look Muslim? Police see a white guy who WAS shooting people, but they don't see his gun but instead yours, who's going to get shot?

These are the things you NEVER hear alluded to in that statement:

"Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun."

It's a trap. It avoids reality. It avoids dealing with the actual issues of there being guns killing innocent people in the first place.

It's a stop gap measure to add guns to stop guns, but it's not the solution, not the long term fix.

It just sounds good, and makes people feel like they are important.

And after all, that's what pro gun types and organizations like the NRA, the GOP, are all about.

We're better than that. We CAN be, better than that.

BE, better than that.

IS there a New Guard coming into the NRA? Finally?

If this silly article weren't so Tea Party-ish, biased and sad, it would be quite laughable.

"Why the “New NRA” Terrifies the Political Left."

Seriously? What a pathetic attempt to draw attention to oneself.

Be not afraid, embrace this New Guard NRA (if they really exist), as they send off the Old Guard (finally) to their retirement homes, their delusional, senile care facilities. That is if they haven't died of gunshot, yet.

I just don't see that the political left is going to be terrified (or even slightly fearful) in the least by this article or what it espouses.

If there is truly a new, younger contingent of Americans who are into firearms and the "sport" of shooting, good. Though I don't see standing around shooting as a sport; soccer is a sport, fencing, sport, tennis, skiing, a sport. I think we're counting too many things as sports when really, their not. If you are overweight and out of shape and can still do your "sport", then it's not a sport.

This new guard is what we've been needing to replace the old guard, the moronic likes of the current NRA leaders we've all seen in the news this past decade or two, and as well been embarrassed (and horrified at times) by, as a nation.

I own guns. Ever since I was a child, actually. I was also in the military. I've done the whole macho sports routine. Although, I couldn't really care less about team sports, for the most part. I mean, I love when the home team (Mariners or Seahawks or, Sounders, etc.) win. But if you want to push it, in my mind the truly "manly" sports (if you'll excuse that kind of ridiculous orientation) aren't team sports at all, where you have protection from others on a team, or where you wear hyper protection suits as in American Football (Rugby maybe, those guys are nuts).

I've always appreciated individual sports of one, against all of nature, or simply another opponent. One on one. It always seemed...cleaner, to me, somehow. But then it's harder to make money off many of those individual sports, for the most part.

After all, we're all about making money off of what we love to watch (and not do).

Then there's UFC style fighting, now that's nuts, that's spectacle, and something I can appreciate. One against one. I like a sport where I can tell who the guy is on the field without having to read his name on his football jersey over all his protective gear. Head injuries? Yeah, well whatever. That's a sport that will look different in ten years or less.

I was told when younger that you shouldn't compare yourself to others as much as yourself, and your own limitations. You are the challenge you need to excel over, not some other guy who may be genetically predisposed to kick your ass regardless. YOU.

Nothing wrong with team sports, I've just always been into gauging my capabilities against my own standards and pushing beyond my own limits. Many times in the end, those turned out to be limits that exceeded those of others. I've usually done quite well, actually, when put then into a team environment. It just wasn't my thing is all. I had wanted to join the football team in junior high, but my mother was afraid I'd get hurt. That was after her having taken me down to a Karate dojo where I had about five fights a night and then fought in tournaments. All one on one.

Not to mention, in non-team sports (like racquetball, and how I played, it wasn't a gentle sport; tennis, full contact fighting, etc.), there simply IS no one else to "fumble the ball" but yourself; no one else to blame, but you. Sports don't have to have a "winner", just someone knowing they have exceeded their own demands, and surviving a situation where they could have been hurt, or died.

But sports don't have to be like that, as in tennis, or shooting sports, other than ones involving killing.

From very young I was into things like climbing, cliff surfing (where you leap off cliffs to land on loose soil and small rocks and "surf" down along a steeply inclined, loose surface), firearms (not hunting), martial arts including full contact later on, backpacking, SCUBA diving (usually alone, but I don't recommend that for others), sky diving, car racing, and so on; then into darker pursuits.

Anyway getting back to the article, the best thing that could happen to these young gun lovers, as well as for the rest of America, IS for a younger generation to take over, One MORE intelligent to replace those moronic dinosaurs running the NRA these past couple of decades or so.

Unless these younger sportspeople are brainwashed by that old guard and continue to push their nonsense, this is all good! It's great! Though, I just don't see it happening, their being brainwashed that is; and surely hope it doesn't. And it most likely won't as they are mostly more intelligent than those they will be replacing. Or so one can only hope, anyway.

I mean seriously, the NRA suggest if there are guns killing people in mass shootings in schools, more guns are the answer? Remember the Cold War and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)? Yeah, that was a Great Idea. Pouring gas onto a fire is a great way to put out a fire, right? Maybe in a Bizarro world (see old Superman comics). Yes, MAD worked for what it's worth but really, we're not talking about a limited nation state situation, but millions of individuals, without controls and checks and balances between them and their pulling a trigger.

So like I said, NO ONE is terrified of a New NRA.

I suspect, they may actually just be a saving grace in the end.

So let's welcome them!

We may just finally be seeing the end of the OLD NRA!

The NRA sure seems nuts. Surprised?

Is the NRA's Wayne LaPierre insane. Or just self serving? It is after all, his job.

Add armed guards to all our schools? We can't even afford to pay our teachers a decent wage, now we need armed guards? Guards who you know won't be the cream of the crop, let's face it. Have you SEEN the TSA? Putting armed guards in thousands of schools would boost the NRA's credibility and boost the gun industry by quite a bit. But it wouldn't protect all that much. Most of those schools would never see an incident and it would be a huge waste of money and resources.

Wouldn't it make more sense, along with whatever else we decide upon to correct this rather small but very noticeable national trend of mass murder, to reinforce the schoolrooms so that they can be locked down when something happens, securing the children, teachers and administrators from attack and locking off or in, the perpetrators? Wouldn't that create jobs? Jobs that would begin and then be over but not go on forever like armed security?

Perhaps having a locked down gun in every school and one or two members of schools to have training access to use that weapon should something ever happen, before police show up, might be a reasonable thing.

The NRA has called their suggested program, the "Shield Program". Isn't that what I'm suggesting here? To give schools the ability to engage a shield if an when it is necessary? Isn't this far more aligned with being a "shield" than the NRA's suggestion of bringing more guns into the schools?

Consider, how often does this happen to schools? How many schools are there? This is not a massive thing, it's effects on us emotionally is massive. According to the National Center for Education Statistics via NPR, March 16, shows that in 1993 and 1994 there were 40 homicides each year in elementary and high schools. Guess the insanity of Junior High schools keeps most crazies out of those institutions for reasons of competition? Or maybe they are grouping Jr. High and High schools?

Does this look like an epidemic? 

The point is, the media has saturated us with this event. Yes, it's horrible. Yes, if it were my kids killed or even in that school I'd be incensed. But that's why we have calmer professionals around, to think for us when we can't.

No, I don't think we need to arm our schools, or our society. Yes, we have the right to keep and bear arms. Work it out. But in an intelligent way. We need more jobs right? Which makes more sense, hiring armed guards, or putting laborers to work on schools?

Then there is legislation. Do we really need assault weapons? Well, perhaps it's our right, but just as we don't or shouldn't have the right to own anti tank weapons, we probably should not have full assault weaponry. Perhaps we can with limitations. For a long, long time it's been legal to have fully automatic weapons but the license for it is very expensive, or used to be. You can own a suppressor/silencer, but you need the licensing. Not every Tom, Dick and Idiot needs to be owning one.

Of course, you can make your own and most of what's going on subverts gun laws so how cracking down on guns legally will keep illegal usage down, I'm not so sure. Yes, less guns around is less ability to use them. But it seems that a lot of these killings (and most are in inner cities but no one seems to care about that, just when children are kills, so if you'd paid attention sooner to the people you DON'T care about, maybe your kids wouldn't be getting killed now?

And I think that is a relevant point. It's not the guns that are killing people. It's the attitude and the culture of this nation that is doing it, or at least, allowing it to be possible. Even, if you think about it, reasonable  Reasonable in that sense that you can reason why this might happen, not in the sense that it's a reasonable thing to allow, or put up with.

So, should we do something? Yes. But let's make it something that will functionally do something and not just waste money. Going to war with Iraq was doing something about 9/11 but was it the most functional thing to do considering the situation? Hell, no. Going into Afghanistan was and we did that within a few weeks and we kicked some serious ass, but almost no one knew that, because we wanted more pain on the other side. What other side? We didn't really care, we wanted to lash out and old Bush Jr. was happy to help out and look good.

Like now, we want to lash out, but does it matter if we do anything reasonable, or functional? Or should we just have a bunch of knee jerk reactions to what feels good to do?

Let's do something to solve the problem. Because whatever that is, it probably won't feel good, or good enough, but it could be the right thing to do.

More guns, isn't the solution to guns. Those controlling the guns, is where the real issue lay, and no one wants to deal with that. I'm actually getting exhausted repeating this line over and over again to people. Because, no one is listening.

They just want to last out and hope that stops these things from happening. Well, guess what? It won't. Because you see, you actually have to do something that is useful, to stop things that you don't want to happen, from happening.