Spreading the gun epidemic
by digby
Following up on the New York Times editorial below, I thought it would be helpful to re-publish Wayne LaPierre’s speech at CPAC from a year ago by way of contrast:
It’s great to be here today, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your warm welcome.
There must be some NRA members out there! To each of you, I thank you for being here with me and for your support and vigilance in defending our freedom. You and NRA members all over the country have made a real difference in making this nation and our freedoms safer.
A little over a year ago, the NRA offered a simple, honest and effective proposal to make our schools safer. The political and media elites responded by calling me just about every nasty name in the book. You remember.
But Americans responded differently. In city after county after school board after statehouse, teachers, parents, police and legislators agreed with us and put armed security safeguards in place.
History has proven again the truth that President Obama and anti-freedom activists everywhere deny and try to suppress — the truth that firearms in the hands of good people save lives.
The political elites can’t escape and the darlings of the liberal media can’t change the God-given right of good people to protect themselves. For that fundamental human right, the NRA stands unflinching and unapologetic. And in defense of our freedom,
NRA’s 5 million members and America’s 100 million gun owners will not back down — not now, not ever!
Freedom has never needed our defense more than now. Almost everywhere you look, something has gone wrong.
You feel it in your heart, you know it in your gut. Something has gone wrong. The core values we believe in, the things we care about most, are changing. Eroding.
Our right to speak. Our right to gather. Our right to privacy. The freedom to work, and practice our religion, and raise and protect our families the way we see fit.
Those aren’t old values. They aren’t new values. They are core freedoms. The core values that have always defined us as a nation and we feel them — we feel them — slipping away.
All across America, everywhere I go, people come up to me and say, “Wayne, I’ve never been worried about this country … until now.”
Not with anger, but with sadness in their eyes. “I’ve never been worried about this country … until now.”
We’re worried about the economic crisis choking our budgets and shrinking our retirement. We’re worried about providing decent health care and a college education for our children. We fear for the safety of our families — it’s why neighborhood streets that were once filled with bicycles and skateboards, laughter in the air, now sit empty and silent.
In virtually every way, for the things we care about most, we feel profound loss. We are sad not because we fear something IS going wrong, but because we know something already HAS gone wrong.
It’s why more and more Americans are buying firearms and ammunition — not to cause trouble, but because we sense that America is already IN trouble.
We know that, sooner or later, reckless government actions and policies have consequences. That when government corrupts the truth and breaks faith with the American people, the entire fabric of our society — everything we believe in and count on — is in jeopardy.
Political dishonesty and media dishonesty have linked together, joined forces, to misinform and deceive the American public. Let’s be straight about it — the political and media elites are lying to us.
They lie bills into law. They pass legislation they haven’t even read, yet eagerly defend on television. Health care policies, economic policies, foreign affairs all seem repeatedly reckless.
The IRS is now a weapon. A weapon to punish anyone who disagrees with them, and that means every one of you.
They try to regulate our religion. They collect our cell phone and email data. They give us Solyndra, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Obamacare,
massive unemployment, a debt that will choke our grandchildren and one executive order on top of another.
Rather than expose government dishonesty and scandal — like they used to — the media elites whitewash it. Move on, they tell us, there’s nothing to see here.
Yet, one of America’s greatest threats is a national news media that fails to provide a level playing field for the truth. Now it’s all entertainment, ratings and personal celebrity. The next sensational story and the deliberate spinning and purposeful use of words and language — truth be damned — to advance their own agenda.
Here’s how you know the media is lying. They still call themselves “journalists.”
They’ve never been honest about the NRA. They hate us, just for saying out loud and sticking up for what we believe, as if we have no right.
So they try to ridicule us into oblivion or shame us into submission. But their moral indignation should be directed into their own make-up
mirrors. The media’s intentional corruption of the truth is an abomination and NRA members will never — and I mean never — submit or surrender to the national media!People have become so weary of all the government and media dishonesty, the all-too-commonplace lying, that most Americans have stopped listening.
It’s why the president’s State of the Union Address was largely ignored by the public. It’s why, according to a recent poll, 90 percent of Americans disapprove of Washington.
It’s why a majority of Americans, in poll after poll, say we don’t trust the White House, we don’t trust Congress, we don’t much trust either national political party, and we sure as heck don’t trust the national news media!
We don’t trust government, because government itself has proven unworthy of our trust. We trust ourselves and we trust what we know in our hearts to be right.
We trust our freedom. In this uncertain world, surrounded by lies and corruption, there is no greater freedom than the right to survive, to protect our families with all the rifles, shotguns and handguns we want.
We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all.
I ask you. Do you trust this government to protect you?
I sure don’t trust psychos like Wayne LaPierre to do it, that’s for sure.
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