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Op-Ed

Let the Kids Die, the NRA Says — and Here’s Money

February 23, 2018

Near as I can figure it, the NRA’s response to the latest mass murder in a public school is this: Screw those kids. Let ‘em die. Don’t kiss your children goodnight; kiss them good-bye. Here’s some more money for Congress and the President of the United States: Now kiss our ass.

Robert Kahn

By Robert Kahn

Deputy editor emeritus, Courthouse News

Near as I can figure it, the NRA’s response to the latest mass murder in a public school is this: Screw those kids. Let ‘em die. Don’t kiss your children goodnight; kiss them good-bye. Here’s some more money for Congress and the President of the United States: Now kiss our ass.

Fifty-one words, my fellow countrymen, sums up what the NRA has been saying for decades — even after President George H.W. Bush turned in his lifetime membership card in 1995, when Wayne LaPierre called federal firearms agents “jack-booted government thugs.”

Since the plague year of 1348 or thereabouts, LaPierre has been executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. He and his acolytes today are the foremost promoters of terrorism in the United States.

There is no other way to say it.

LaPierre, a 69-year-old Roman Catholic son of a General Electric accountant has been top dog in the NRA for 27 years. And if you think it’s unfair or unkind to bring up his family, consider what he and the NRA do to other families.

With 17 students and teachers fresh in their graves this week, NRA representative Dana Loesch told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.: “Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it. … You love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold.”

Vile as that is, it’s nothing new for the NRA. In 2000, LaPierre said President Bill Clinton wanted Americans to be killed by guns, to build support for gun control laws.

In 2012, he blamed the slaughter of 20 little children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on “gun-free zones” at schools.

And the NRA’s man in the White House this week, pockets full of money and blood, said the solution is pay public schoolteachers “a little bit of a bonus” to carry guns on campus.

Great: Crossfire.

Anyone with half a brain and part of a crippled heart would cry hold, enough. But no. All the NRA and LaPierre do after each mass murder — 26 dead in Connecticut, 57 in Las Vegas, 17 in Florida — is to shovel more money in buckets to members of Congress, state legislatures and to the president of the United States.

Thirty million NRA dollars to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign: half a million dollars for each dead kid last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. On Saint Valentine’s Day.

Just as vile as the Florida massacre were the immediate reactions from Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and other right-wing millionaires, who called the grieving high school students “stooges” of the Democratic Party, “paid actors,” plotting a campaign of — exactly what?

The deranged shooter in Florida is a sick man. He is insane. But Limbaugh, O’Reilly and their right-wing Republican allies are sane enough to make millions of dollars a year from “legacy” media, promoting the NRA and its delusions.

LaPierre, Limbaugh, Trump and O’Reilly support terrorism. And tens of millions of Americans support them.

Why do these ethically crippled people have so much public support?

Why do U.S. corporations pay tens of millions of dollars every year to advertise their wares on shows hosted by neo-fascist millionaires?

Beats the heck out of me. But I know this: The #MeToo movement has forced dozens of powerful men from their jobs in a very short time, for lesser sins than enabling the mass murders of children. I hope the #NeverAgain movement can do the same to Congress and in all 50 statehouses.

I know plenty of people in the NRA. I’ve seen their Sharpshooter’s Badges, which they won by shooting .22s in a shooting range.

Not for shooting children in elementary schools.

There’s not much more to say but that NRA, as it is today, under the behindship of LaPierre, should be crushed and defunded as the neo-fascist organization it is. And that voters should ask every member of Congress, and the president, and every member of every state legislature why they think it’s a Great Republican Triumph that, as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said, a school secretary can bring home an extra $1.50 a week thanks to a regressive tax cut, while children are being murdered in our schools.

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