When I saw this article at Right Wing Watch I could hardly believe the audacity of it. Wayne LaPierre is the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association and it’s chief propaganda spewer. He has a long history of ludicrous pronouncements and conspiracy theories, mostly warning of imaginary armies of firearm confiscators invading the bunkers of America’s gun fetishists.
The subject of this self-glorifying harangue (video below) was a tribute to the historically unparalleled genius of gun owners. LaPierre was not shy about heralding the brilliance of his troopers during a speech at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. He said…
“So many of those elites, they think they’re better than us. They somehow think they’re more sophisticated. They think they’re more intellectually evolved somehow than we are. Or they think they’re just somehow plain smarter than we are. Well, I’ve got news for the elites who look down their noses at all of us and our rights: We gun owners are a heck of a lot smarter than you’ll ever be. It’s true.”
Well that just about settles then. Who can argue with that? Just be careful not to pay any attention to the abundance of news stories that present a somewhat different picture. All you have to do is venture over to Twitter and check out the hashtag #GunFAIL. What you will find is an endless array of incidents that expose the geniuses that LaPierre is exalting as idiots. Some of the reports are comical or ironic. But others are tragic despite their foolishness.
The stories include people who shoot themselves while demonstrating their firearm safety expertise. Others report on people who shoot their friends while pretending to aim “unloaded” weapons at them. The most heartbreaking are the stories of children who shoot other children, sometimes their siblings, after finding an unsecured weapon in the home.
And let’s not forget that some of the most infamous and celebrated NRA members include Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent. Those two alone bring down the average IQ level of the organization to single digits. And then there’s this brainiac:
I don’t mean to portray all gun owners as ignorant dopes. Certainly many of them are intelligent and responsible. But any community of people wherein these types of tragedies are so painfully common cannot possibly pass themselves off as, in the words of LaPierre, “in all of the world, some of the smartest citizens.”
But what makes LaPierre and the hardcore NRA-theist crowd really stupid is their opposition to common sense reforms that would prevent much of the suffering caused by irresponsible gun use, whether accidental or intentional. Universal background checks, hi-tech trigger locks, limiting magazine capacity, mental health screening, etc., are just a few of the measures that could save lives but are opposed by the NRA. If they really wanted to demonstrate some intelligence they would start backing these proposals like the majority of Americans do.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.