Back in 1995 the executive vice-president of the N.R.A., Wayne LaPierre, called federal law-enforcement agents “jack-booted thugs”. He also claimed that, “in Clinton’s administration, if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.”
His attitude toward law-enforcement was rather clear, and he influenced a lot of people.
He has not retracted those statements, so their affect is still with us.
Ignoring the part of the Second Amendment that mentions a “well regulated militia” the fanatic supporters of an overly broad Second Amendment right to bear any type of arms, claim that people have a right to guns whose sole purpose is to kill a large number of people in order to be ready when the government oversteps its bounds and we need to protect ourselves from it.
No one has bothered to define any terms or even what is meant by the government overstepping its bounds and who determines that.
Apparently, tired of the “jack booted thugs” taking Black lives, twenty-five-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson made his own determination and acted. He did what the NRA keeps telling gun owners they are expected to do. He attacked a governmental entity.
And, although there were many macho good guys with guns keeping an eye on the participants from the side lines, and I don’t mean the police, and even walking with them as allies or “observers”, when the shooting started, instead of being good guys with guns taking on the bad guys with guns, they ran and caused confusion as no one knew if they were the shooters, or were getting ready to participate in some group plot later on during the panic.
They can walk into malls and restaurants, even down public streets, to show they are proud of their right to carry guns and want everyone to know they have them, but when it came time to actually use them in the good guy/bad guy claim they like to proclaim, they ran.
According to Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings
“It’s logical to say that in a shooting situation, open carry can be detrimental to the safety of individuals.”
According to Chief David Brown, people running through the shooting scene with rifles and body armor required officers to track them down and bring them to the police department. This could have been time better spent trying to find and stop the shooter.
When Philando Castile, who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm, was shot because, as the officer said through his attorney, he had a gun, the N.R.A. was silent.
When it finally spoke after the Dallas shooting, rather than a strong statement decrying the over reach of a rogue police officer shooting a man with a license to carry, its tepid statement about Philando Castile was,
“The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated. In the meantime, it is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing.”
What was different in this case?
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Why hasn’t the NRA jumped, as they have so many times before, to defend someone legally carrying a firearm?
Usually the NRA speaks out when a police officer, one of the jack booted thugs, questions anyone carrying a gun and brays about the Second Amendment. But this time, it was silent. It failed to come to the defense of a man who had a license to carry his gun and was murdered by a rogue police officer because of that.
Although the NRA claims to speak for gun owners, it has no more than five million members out of one hundred million Americans who live in households with guns. These people own guns for a variety of reasons from sports to self-defense, and support reasonable steps to prevent innocent people, civilians or police, from being killed by gunfire.
The NRA chooses to ignore the ninety-five million.
After the shooting in Dallas, LaPierre, a little too late, expressed
“the deep anguish all of us feel for the heroic Dallas law enforcement officers who were killed and wounded, as well as to those who so bravely ran toward danger to defend the city and the people of Dallas.”
When someone finally acted on his call to defend yourself from “the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens” he had to change his tune and appear more rational by making that statement.
He needed to cover up that for which he is responsible.
Open Carry did nothing to help stop the mass shooting of police officers in Dallas. It had the opportunity to justify its existence, but it failed.
And, it added to the danger.
Major Max Geron of the Dallas Police Department pointed out,
“There was also the challenge of sorting out witnesses from potential suspects, Texas is an Open Carry state, and there were a number of armed demonstrators taking part. There was confusion on the radio about the description of suspects and whether or not one or more was in custody.”
The only way to have kept Texans of any stripe from attending the demonstration armed would have been to determine that certain people could openly carry without limit, while others could not, and that while some could carry anywhere, others couldn’t.
Now, it turns out, the NRA will not jump to the defense of any gun carrying person shot for merely carrying their gun legally, but will find a way to hold back if the person is not from the right group.
The NRA’s true colors came shining through this past week.