As news broke early Sunday that there was a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the iPhone of the President of the National Rifle Association undoubtedly went off. His Media Relations Officer would be briefing him on the situation and designing the narrative they would put out.
At the time of this writing, there hadn’t been an official statement from the NRA. Their last Twitter activity involved outrage that the state of Alabama was opposing a bill to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons in public.
Someone will say that if patrons in that nightclub had been armed, the massacre wouldn’t have occurred. Well, the first to react was an armed security guard who exchanged gunfire with the shooter, who then took hostages. The shooter is dead because police stormed the club and killed him.
The philosophy that more guns is the answer puts an awful lot of confidence into people whose profiency with a weapon, and ability to make snap judgments, are unknown. These are the same people we see every day, some of whom have poor driving, parenting and relationship skills. They’re regular everyday people who make mistakes. Not everyone is good in a crisis and carrying a gun doesn’t change that.
It’s not the wild west. Most of us will never be in a situation where they have to respond with lethal force. Right now, they’re calling the rampage a case of suspected “domestic terrorism”. The club catered to gay patrons and the shooter is believed to have been radicalized. Not every gathering spot can have metal detectors and body scanners, and the public wouldn’t stand for it anyway. The answer seems so simple to me. You start with a tighter restriction on the guns.
Perhaps the NRA should be declared a terrorist organisation? Or, at least guilty of providing aid to terrorist organisations? I know, it’s an extreme view. Too much lobbyist money involved for this to ever happen. But perhaps it will take extreme opposition to end up somewhere reasonable.
Hearing today that Walmart is going to stop selling AR-15s (the gun of choice for mad men and mass killers in the past several years in the US). That might be a tiny step in the right direction. I want to know what kind of idiot “hunter” feels he needs to aerate his prey? Oh, yes. That’s right. They’re not really for hunting animals, are they?