Has the NRA Jumped the Shark?

Blogger Pamela Haag at Big Think talks so insightfully about the NRA’s response to the Sandy Hook massacre in this piece posted days before Christmas. The absurdity is hard to ignore; facts are facts. Only problem with that are the number of people who don’t let anything like the truth get in the way of their agenda. As we’ve been told repeatedly (as if repeating their “theory” enough, we’ll believe it?) Ms. Haag renders moot the theory that gun control won’t keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill with this sad recap of similar slaughters:

All of these mass shootings—and we have an archive to choose from—were perpetrated by “good” guys:  They were committed by people who were law-abiding non-criminals up until the moment when they committed ruthless mass murder, most often in affluent, suburban malls and schools. Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Aurora shooter James Holmes, Ryan Lanza (and his mother, Nancy, who owned the guns), University of Texas shooter Charles Whitman, who was suffering from a brain tumor when he gunned down over 30 people on campus in 1966, and Virginia Tech’s Seung-Hui Cho among others all would have qualified for the NRA’s pantheon of good guys who they imagine defending others with their guns against bad people. 

In real life, as we’ve now seen in many examples, erstwhile good guys commit these murders. They most often don’t have criminal records. They don’t sling hash on a corner in West Baltimore. They aren’t “gang bangers.” They don’t have assault charges against them. Some, while mentally ill, have no record of a mental illness diagnosis or, alas, treatment. Most are affluent; many are well-educated.

So the NRA’s recommendation to hire armed “good guys” to secure our schools doesn’t make much sense given this information and the fact that the past is the best predictor of the future, right…?