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| The National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, gestures during a news conference in response to the Connecticut school shooting on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012 in Washington. The nation's largest gun-rights lobby is calling for armed police officers to be posted in every American school to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings." |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Guns and police officers in all American schools are what's needed to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings," the National Rifle Association declared Friday, taking a no-retreat stance in the face of growing calls for gun control after the Connecticut shootings that claimed the lives of 26 children and school staff.
"The
only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,"
said Wayne LaPierre, the group's chief executive officer.
Some
members of Congress who had long scoffed at gun-control proposals have
begun to suggest some concessions could be made, and a fierce debate
over legislation seems likely next month. President Barack Obama has
demanded "real action, right now."
The
nation's largest gun-rights lobby broke its weeklong silence on the
shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School with a defiant
presentation. The event was billed as a news conference, but NRA leaders
took no questions. Twice, they were interrupted by banner-waving
protesters, who were removed by security.
Some
had predicted that after the slaughter of a score of elementary-school
children by a man using a semi-automatic rifle, the group might soften
its stance, at least slightly. Instead, LaPierre delivered a 25-minute
tirade against the notion that another gun law would stop killings in a
culture where children are exposed daily to violence in video games,
movies and music videos. He argued that guns are the solution, not the
problem.
"Before Congress reconvenes, before
we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything
else; as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we
need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a
protection program proven to work," LaPierre said. "And by that I mean
armed security."
He said Congress should
immediately appropriate funds to post an armed police officer in every
school. Meanwhile, he said the NRA would develop a school emergency
response program that would include volunteers from the group's 4.3
million members to help guard children.
His
armed-officers idea was immediately lambasted by gun control advocates,
and not even the NRA's point man on the effort seemed willing to go so
far. Former Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, whom LaPierre
named national director of the program, said in an interview that
decisions about armed guards in schools should be made by local
districts.
"I think everyone recognizes that
an armed presence in schools is sometimes appropriate," Hutchinson said.
"That is one option. I would never want to have a mandatory requirement
for every school district to have that."
He also noted that some states would have to change their laws to allow armed guards at schools.
Hutchinson
said he'll offer a plan in January that will consider other measures
such as biometric entry points, patrols and consideration of school
layouts to protect security.
LaPierre argued
that guards need to be in place quickly because "the next Adam Lanza,"
the suspected shooter in Newtown, Conn., is already planning an attack
on another school.
"How many more copycats are
waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media
machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of
identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their
mark?" LaPierre asked. "A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we
possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an
active national database of the mentally ill?"
While
there is a federally maintained database of the mentally ill - people
so declared by their states - a 1997 Supreme Court ruling that states
can't be required to contribute information has left significant gaps.
In any case, creation of a mandatory national database probably would
have had little impact on the ability of suspected shooters in four mass
shootings since 2011 to get and use powerful weapons. The other people
accused either stole the weapons used in the attacks or had not been
ruled by courts to be "mentally defective" before the shootings.
New
York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the NRA is blaming everyone but
itself for a national gun crisis and is offering "a paranoid, dystopian
vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed
and no place is safe."
Rep. Jerrold Nadler,
D-N.Y., called the NRA's response "both ludicrous and insulting" and
pointed out that armed personnel at Columbine High School and Fort Hood
could not stop mass shootings. The liberal group CREDO, which organized
an anti-NRA protest on Capitol Hill, called LaPierre's speech "bizarre
and quite frankly paranoid."
"This must be a
wake-up call even to the NRA's own members that the NRA's Washington
lobbyists need to stand down and let Congress pass sensible gun control
laws now," CREDO political director Becky Bond said in a statement.
The
NRA's proposal would be unworkable given the huge numbers of officers
needed, said the president of the International Association of Chiefs of
Police, Craig Steckler.
He pointed to budget
cuts and hiring freezes and noted that in his hometown of Fremont,
Calif., it would take half the city's police force to post one officer
at each of the city's 43 schools.
The Department of Education has counted 98,817 public schools in the United States and an additional 33,366 private schools.
There
already are an estimated 10,000 school resource officers, most of them
armed and employed by local police departments, in the nation's schools,
according to Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association
of School Resource Officers.
Gun rights
advocates on Capitol Hill had no immediate comment. They will have to
walk a tough road between pressure from the powerful NRA, backed by an
army of passionate supporters, and outrage over the Sandy Hook deaths
that has already swayed some in Congress to adjust their public views.
A
CNN/ORC poll taken this week found 52 percent of Americans favor major
restrictions on guns or making all guns illegal. Forty-six percent of
people questioned said government and society can take action to prevent
future gun violence, up 13 percentage points from two years ago in the
wake of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six and wounded then
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Since the Connecticut
slayings, President Obama has demanded action against U.S. gun violence
and has called on the NRA to join the effort. Moving quickly after
several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new
legislation to control firearms, the president said this week he wants
proposals that he can take to Congress next month.
Obama
has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that
expired in 2004 and to pass legislation that would stop people from
purchasing firearms from private sellers without background checks.
Obama also has indicated he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of
limiting high-capacity firearms magazines.
Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said former President Bill Clinton called
her with an offer to help get an assault weapons ban reinstated. Clinton
signed such a ban into law in 1994, but it expired after 10 years.
Feinstein
said she's not opposed to having armed guards at schools, but she
called the NRA proposal a distraction from what she said was the real
problem: "easy access to these killing machines" that are far "more
powerful and lethal" than the guns that were banned under the old law.
