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From Impolitical & Irreligious

The NRA Responds

Dunce cap kidWow, what a brilliant solution! Who would have thought the NRA would propose adding more guns to schools?

The NRA, which according to the detailed report linked here has received contributions from gun industry “corporate partners” totaling between $14.7 million and $38.9 million since 2005, believes we need more guns. No way!, right?

Apparently, 10,000 of 130,000 public schools in America already employ armed guards. At least 120,000 new armed guards are needed. Many of these schools can easily cut their music programs to make this happen. Well, many of them have already cut music programs, but there is sure to be a least one unneeded program or a couple of surplus teachers at each school.

I have only a couple of minor concerns.

First of all, preschools and private schools will need armed guards too. What’s another 100,000 armed guards, anyway? Then of course there are malls, movie theaters and churches. Oh, we had better add fitness centers to the list, as this excerpt from the report linked above makes clear:

One Pittsburgh resident who apparently took part in the NRA’s Round-Up Program through MidwayUSA was concealed carry permit holder George Sodini, who in August 2009 opened fire at an LA Fitness Center in Collier, Pennsylvania, killing three women and wounding nine others before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. A copy of the e-mail receipt (see next page) sent to Sodini from MidwayUSA for his purchase of 9mm and .45 ammunition includes a donation of 74 cents from the mass murderer to the NRA via the Round-Up Program.

Better just make it all public places.

My second concern relates to effectiveness. I can’t help but think that if I were the type of crazy, suicidal person who might take an assault weapon into a school to slaughter children, I would have little problem concealing the weapon until I had either mowed down the security guard with my first 30-round clip, or walked into any one of the dozens of classrooms where the security guard didn’t happen to be at that moment.

Better make it battalions of security guards at each public school, preschool, private school, mall, movie theater, church and fitness center. And everywhere else.

I don’t want to turn my blog into a bleeding-heart gun-control forum, so I will shut up about it now. At least I stayed away from footnotes and kept myself from seeming to lump all gun-owning Christians together with right-wing religious hate groups in this post. (My previous post was deliberately over-the-line. It was mean-spirited, but it felt good at the time.)