Missives from the alternate reality, it was. Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA (the National Rifle Association), told us that the solution to too many guns and too many school and mall and other such shootings is more guns.
The NRA wants armed volunteers or paid arms men to guard every public school in the United States. As all schools have multiple entrances, we would need one for each door, I think. A great employment plan, that one! Of course schools don't have money for the classes they actually need to teach and the health care system doesn't have money for mental health care. But never mind! We can get shooting-minded individuals with guns inside the schools, to keep the "bad guys" outside the schools.
Yes, Mr. LaPierre's philosophical views about crimes, evil and guns can be boiled down to this:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.Simple. Like a Wild West movie. And appropriate for a five-year-old's thinking.
As Atrios points out, what on earth could go wrong with a plan like this? Imagine the background checks all that would require! Because surely those volunteering for this service would include those who kinda plan to be the bad guys.
It's a stupid plan. Any killer would first take out the guard, from a distance. It's a stupid plan, what with the shootings at Fort Worth which is a military base. And it's a stupid plan, because his plan logically implies that if the "bad guys" look for places where there are no armed guards, then we will have to keep on arming more and more places, offering more and more guards, until, finally, every person going to the supermarket needs an armed guard. Well, at least all supermarkets do. And all hospitals, and any place where people ever might gather.
While writing this post, I quickly gathered news items from various very recent shootings in the United States. Here they are:
Relative shoots costumed girl after mistaking her for a skunk.
Authorities in central Pennsylvania are trying to determine why a man fatally shot three people along a rural road before dying in a gunfight with police.
A police captain says two people have been shot to death inside a nightclub in a suburb of Birmingham, Ala.
We need to arm lonely stretches of roads, night clubs and we also need to provide an armed good guy to all young girls who might be accidentally shot by their relatives.