After a high-profile shooting, the NRA goes dark. Whether you agree with that PR blackout or not, you’ve got to hand it to Veep Wayne LaPierre (or his copywriter) for his post-Sandy Hook admonition to gun control advocates: “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Over the last couple of days . . .
The civilian disarmament industrial complex has seized on the Las Vegas spree killing as “proof” that Mr. Lapierre’s “good guy” maxim is BS. Like this [via rollingstone.com]:
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA chief Wayne LaPierre infamously said after Newtown.
But the shooter in Las Vegas, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, was on the 32nd floor of a casino building, a quarter-mile away from the bulk of his victims down in a concert venue on the ground. Unless the NRA plans on advocating for carry licenses for F-16s or surface-to-surface missile systems, it’s hard to see how the “good guy with a gun” argument is going to fly this time.
Is it? Is it hard to see that Stephen Paddock was eventually stopped by a SWAT team equipped with . . . wait for it . . . guns? Apparently so, because NPR’s Morning Edition host tried to make the same argument: armed self-defense is delusional [5:05 below].
slate.com also went there, declaring No Pistol Could Have Stopped This; The Las Vegas shooting demolishes the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” argument. Apparently, “Las Vegas exposed its complete illogic.” Only it didn’t. It simply exposed the obvious limitations of armed self-defense.
Speaking of illogic, if gun control advocates think that Americans are going to look at this black swan event and decide “well, I can’t protect myself from a hidden sniper so I don’t need to exercise my natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms,” the antis are [intentionally] delusional. As if you didn’t know.