It was Gun Appreciation Day on Hannity tonight. And part of showing his appreciation was to help out NRA head and gun-rights martyr, Wayne LaPierre. LaPierre has not exactly been a popular guy lately, even in right wing circles. First, he came under criticism for his press conference after the Newtown school shootings, then for his subsequent Meet the Press appearance. Now he’s under attack for the NRA ad attacking President Obama’s gun proposals. But on Hannity, LaPierre was nothing but a regular Joe standing up for the rights of America’s other regular fellas under attack by gun-hating, hypocritical elites. UPDATED: The NRA lied and got a pass from Fox.
“You’re about to be Mitt Romney-ed,” Hannity told LaPierre, thereby setting him up for martyrdom. “They’re (the Obama administration) now running a political campaign against you and your organization.”
LaPierre was part of a one-hour gun special that included a “studio audience” of all like-minded people. They applauded when LaPierre said, “The American public is going to stand and fight for their freedom and the NRA is going to stand and fight with ‘em.”
It didn’t take long to get to the victimhood. The ever-suffering Hannity said:
We use armed guards to protect our elected politicians, our presidents, our mayors, our cabinet officials. We protect money in a bank. Hollywood stars, they hire Bo Dietl (a member of the audience), right? We have at courthouses, at stadiums, office buildings, airports, aren’t they all, they all have armed guards, right? Why were people attacking you for suggesting maybe retired police officers and military be put in schools to prevent this from happening?
LaPierre is, apparently, just as much a Special GOP Victim as his host:
It was ridiculous. I mean they attack me for opposing what doesn’t work, which is one more gun law and they attack me for opposing, for supporting what does work, which is school security. I mean, what it really boils down to is the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the political elites and the media elites in this country.
Well, you can’t get much more elite than these two: $970,000-a-year LaPierre and a multimillionaire radio/TV host. But I digress.
LaPierre continued:
Most of their kids, when they go to school, they’re protected by police in the school and armed security… A third of the schools in the country have armed security right now. When President Clinton proposed it years ago. And yet Wayne says, “Let’s make people safe” and they call me crazy, they – everything under the sun. Well, I could care less because what I’m proposing will make people safe. What they’re proposing won’t.
In Part 2, Hannity played the NRA’s hideous new ad targeting President Obama and his daughters. Hannity called it a “powerful ad but yet anything the NRA points out seems to just come under attack.”
LaPierre repeated his “media elite hypocrisy” whine and added, “What’s unfair is there are Moms and Dads all over this country getting up and sending their kids to school on Monday and Tuesday of next week that are praying that their kids come home safe. And we could immediately help protect those kids by putting armed security in school, the same armed security the elites have."
Of course, neither of these two rich gun lovers offered up any thoughts as to how public schools, already struggling with budget problems, should pay for those protections for “regular” children. Nor, as Jason Linkins noted in an excellent analysis of LaPierre's post-Newtown press conference, was the phrase "private-sector solution" ever uttered here, either.
UPDATE: It turns out the NRA's ad was flat-out wrong when it said the Obama daughters' school had armed guards. Where was the Fox News fact checking?
Because we don’t want to give up our freedoms, Sean:
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/01/14/cartoons-of-the-day-new-school-security/securitymeasures2/
@truman & Kent Brockman: Mittens was last seen pumping his own gas in La Jolla:
http://investorplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/romney6666.jpg
Quite a comedown for the onetime Bain Capital Master of the Universe; next thing you know, he’ll be forced to drive his own car into his own auto elevator . . .
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(For the trolls: “hand”-gun, get it?).
The vast majority of homocides, suicides and fatal accidents (aka kids found Daddy’s gun on the coffee table) are attributed to pistols and such like. And the killing rate in the USA is four times that of the UK and six times that of Germany. That should tell us all something, no?
While I agree that the NRA couldn’t care less about kids, I’m rather more inclined to believe that their main concern – as representatives of gun manufacturers – is money. Both Truthout and Crooks and Liars have had articles on the fact (a no brainer, actually) that guns don’t wear out or become too tattered to wear . That means that the only way to keep on selling them is to develop new and increasingly deadlier versions.
Thanks to the NRA and a population briefly flush with cash, having a shotgun for hunting has morphed into a totally fabricated demand for a full arsenal that would include a mini-nuke if those were available.
LaPierre’s appearance on High End Hannocchio’s declining show is strictly damage control. Hannocchio, as expected, threw softball questions.
Tell that idiot LaPierre that the gunman who murdered those innocent children was not a gang member in Chicago, but a upper-middle class confused kid with serious problems. That kid that shot movie-goers in Colorado was not a gang member either. Both of them had assault weapons.
The NRA’s only concern is their reputation, not the lives of innocent children. LaPierre makes the Grinch seemed tamed.
The Stop Hannity Express says a studio audience is not going to stop Hannocchio’s declining ratings. The masses, including some conservatives, have stopped listening to him. And it’s going to get worse in the next few months.
NOTE TO LAPIERRE
Obama is talking about banning assault weapons, not handguns, you paranoid idiot.
NOTE TO HANNITY
You are losing your mojo. You are no longer influential in America. A growing percentage of conservatives are on to you.