Perhaps the good folks at NRA were just as stunned as the rest of us at the Virginia Tech shootings, what else could account for the story (see below) that’s up on their website? (As I write, 7:00 Pacific Time, more than 12 hours since the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history):
Wayne LaPierre: What They Didn’t Tell You Today
4/13/2007
Today is one of the most important days of the year for gun owners. The start of the NRA Annual Meetings is both a celebration of freedom and a rally for the Second Amendment, but it’s also a show of force by gun owners to the enemies of freedom everywhere.
As tens of thousands of freedom-loving Americans descend on St. Louis, the anti-gunners are doing everything they can to chip away at your rights.
Sarah Brady’s sending e-mails to Brady Campaign supporters, hoping to start a Brady Gun Law Defense Fund. Unlike the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund, the Brady lawyers will be trying to hurt gun owners, not help them. They’re pushing for persecution of the Second Amendment, not protection. But when we gather in St. Louis, we show them we won’t be pushed around.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s calling for a ban on all semi-automatic firearms. Mr. Mayor, we’ve already seen what that has done for England and crime there. Why would you insist on disarming law-abiding Americans? Menino and his cohort Michael Bloomberg want to turn millions of Americans into instant criminals. But when we gather in St. Louis, we show them we won’t be pushed around.
Rebecca Peters of the International Action Network on Small Arms is pushing an arms trade treaty that would gut our Second Amendment freedoms. They’re not interested in lobbying Congress or state legislators. Instead, they want to go global, with the help of anti-gun politicians in countries without the Second Amendment. That arms trade treaty, if ratified by Congress or signed by a future president, would mean a global war on your guns the likes of which has never been seen. But when we gather in St. Louis, we show them we won’t be pushed around.
In fact, when we gather in St. Louis, we’re pushing back. We’re pushing for Castle Doctrine laws across the country. We’re pushing for legislation that ensures the gun confiscations in New Orleans will never be repeated in this country. We’re pushing to protect our rights to protect ourselves, even against anti-gun employers who want to leave you defenseless to and from work. When we gather in St. Louis, we’re pushing to protect and promote our freedoms, and we won’t stop pushing until we’ve won.
So originally, I thought they just hadn’t updated their site. But the longer I look at it, the more it seems that they just retasked a three-day-old [NRA President] LaPierre speech to be the appropriate response to 33 shooting deaths.
All I can say to that is, wow. I can’t wait to see what they put up tomorrow.
But LaPierre’s rant provides a clue. So-called “Castle Doctrine” laws are the NRA’s latest push. Here’s the Wikipedia definition:
In the United States, laws informally referred to as ‘castle laws’ can sometimes impose an obligation to retreat before using force to defend oneself. The Castle Doctrine provides for an exception to this duty. Provided one is attacked in their own home, vehicle, or place of business, in jurisdictions where ‘castle laws’ are in force, one may stand their ground against an assailant without fear of prosecution.
As TNR points out, “the new stand-your-ground laws are so frightening because they cover shooters who simply feel at risk.”
You can bet this is the strategy the NRA will be rolling out in the days to come: If only some VA Tech student had been packing.
