"Opportunists are exploiting tragedy for political gain…Schools must be the most hardened targets in the country. Evil must be confronted immediately with all force necessary to protect our kids." –Wayne LaPierre
Transcript
Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity. We have a serious discussion ahead, and serious issues that impact every one of us.
Just a week ago, we were all horrified by another terrible tragedy at an American school. Each and every member of the National Rifle Association mourns the loss of the innocent and continues to keep their families and that community in our prayers. We share a goal of safe schools, safe neighborhoods and a safe country.
As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain. Saul Alinsky would have been proud—the breakneck speed of calls for more gun-control laws and the breathless national media eager to smear the NRA.
Think about that. In the midst of genuine grief and very understandable passion—as millions of Americans search for meaningful solutions—what do we find? Chris Murphy and Nancy Pelosi and more, cheered on by the national media, eager to blame the NRA and call for even more government control.
They hate the NRA, hate the Second Amendment, hate individual freedom. In the rush of calls for more government, they have revealed their true selves. These elites don't care—not one wit—about America's schoolchildren. If they truly cared, they'd protect them.
For them, it's not a safety issue. It's a political issue. They care about control—more of it. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearm freedom so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.
They want more restrictions on the law-abiding. Think about that. Their solution is to make you and me less free.
They want to sweep under the carpet the failure of school security, the failure of family, the failure of America's mental health system, and even the unbelievable failure of the FBI. They fantasize about more laws stopping what other laws fail to stop.
Laws succeed when people obey them. That's what the law-abiding majority practices. But once again, so many existing laws were ignored.
Their laws don't stop illegal criminals from crossing our borders every day. Their laws don't stop the scourge of gang violence and drug crime that savages Baltimore and Chicago and every major urban community. Their laws haven't stopped the plague of opioids and Chinese fentanyl from Mexico that flood American streets and kill victims every single day. No wonder law-abiding Americans revere their Second Amendment freedom to protect themselves—now more than ever.
They don't care if their laws work or not—they just want to get more laws to get more control over the people. But the NRA does care. We are Americans who continue to mourn, care and contribute real solutions to this very real problem. Real, practical action to truly protect our children.
Think about it. It is a bizarre fact that, in this country, our jewelry stores are more important than our children. Our banks, our airports, our NBA games, our NFL games, our office buildings, our movie stars, our politicians—they are all more protected than our children at school.
Do we really love our money and our celebrities more than we love our children? Can we answer that question honestly, knowing that we surround and protect so much with armed security while we drop our kids off at schools—those so-called gun-free zones—that are wide open targets for any crazed madman bent on evil to come there first.
In every community in America, school districts and PTAs, teachers' unions and local law enforcement, and moms and dads must come together to implement the very best strategy to harden their schools including effective, trained armed security that will absolutely protect every innocent child. And that has to happen now. Evil walks among us and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids.
The whole idea from some of our opponents that armed security makes us less safe is ridiculous. If that's true, remove it from everywhere—from the White House, from Capitol Hill, from all of Hollywood.
Any American school that needs immediate professional consultation and help with organizing and defining these solutions should call the NRA National School Shield Program and we will provide immediate assistance, absolutely free. That is more than anybody at the Democrat National Committee or NBC News or The Washington Post is offering.
The shameful politicizing of tragedy is a classic strategy right out of the playbook of a poisonous movement.
In my three decades of leading the NRA, I've had the pleasure of working with a number of Democrats who believed America to be the greatest country in the world because of our free-market capitalism and individual constitutional freedom. But during the last decade—the Obama decade—many of those leaders have been forced out as a tidal wave of new European-style socialists have seized control of the Democrat Party.
Obama's promised fundamental transformation of our country began with his own national party—a party that is now infested with saboteurs who don't believe in capitalism, don't believe in the Constitution, don't believe in our freedom and don't believe in America as we know it. Obama may be gone, but their utopian dream for America marches on.
And President Trump's election, while critical, can't turn away the wave of these new European-style socialists bearing down upon us. I’m not just talking about Bernie Sanders—he's near the end of his career.
Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bill DeBlasio, Andrew Cuomo, Corey Booker, Christopher Murphy and Keith Ellison. They are not Democrats in the mold of John F. Kennedy or Tip O'Neill. They hide behind labels like "Democrat," "left-wing" and "progressive" to make their socialist agenda more palatable.
That is terrifying. And that should terrify every citizen who values the American ideal of individual liberty.
They have politicized the Department of Justice, weaponized the Internal Revenue Service and the EPA, perhaps crippled the FBI and the intelligence community, and seized the embedded leadership of them all to advance their agenda. Absolute control of every corner of our government is their ultimate dream.
These intellectual elites think they're smarter than the rest of us, better than we are. The privileged and powerful think they deserve to be in charge of every lever of power.
The U.S. Constitution makes absolutely clear that they are not in charge—We the People are in charge! But Washington likes to ignore that.
Our intelligence community shrouds everything in secrecy, driving into darkness every dirty memo and every dirty institutional memory in the name of national security. But when the leaks come, as so often occurs, the light of day reveals nothing about the security of our country and everything about the corruption of those in power. That’s because in a captive society the loss of transparency results in the loss of truth. They also eliminate internal resistance of wrongdoing in these great institutions.
There is no stronger supporter of our law enforcement community than the NRA. There are tens of thousands of incredible men and women at the FBI. These are honorable, decent, hard-working people dedicated to keeping our country safe. But, as we've learned in recent months, even the FBI is not free of its own corruption, its own unethical agents.
I can understand a few bad apples in an organization as large as the FBI. But what is hard to understand is why no one at the FBI stood up and called BS on its rogue leadership.
Where was the systemic resistance and repulsion that should protect every powerful institution that serves us? The lowest ranking Marine knows to resist an unlawful order. The rank and file in every powerful institution must police its own leadership.
But in still too much of today's Washington, no one speaks out. No one challenges authority. Everyone keeps their mouths closed and their heads down and that is exactly how socialist societies function.
When leaders do whatever they want, when resistance and repercussion disappears, when the fundamental concept of moral behavior is expunged, the state rules the day and anyone who attempts to resist is smeared into submission.
Ah yes, we do live in the age of the socialist smear. The art of the smear. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to stick somewhere, anywhere. It's designed to degrade and destroy all over the national media to serve their agenda.
Continues...
NRATV
If you have a mac open the link on FireFox. Link does not work for me on Safari.
Transcript
Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity. We have a serious discussion ahead, and serious issues that impact every one of us.
Just a week ago, we were all horrified by another terrible tragedy at an American school. Each and every member of the National Rifle Association mourns the loss of the innocent and continues to keep their families and that community in our prayers. We share a goal of safe schools, safe neighborhoods and a safe country.
As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain. Saul Alinsky would have been proud—the breakneck speed of calls for more gun-control laws and the breathless national media eager to smear the NRA.
Think about that. In the midst of genuine grief and very understandable passion—as millions of Americans search for meaningful solutions—what do we find? Chris Murphy and Nancy Pelosi and more, cheered on by the national media, eager to blame the NRA and call for even more government control.
They hate the NRA, hate the Second Amendment, hate individual freedom. In the rush of calls for more government, they have revealed their true selves. These elites don't care—not one wit—about America's schoolchildren. If they truly cared, they'd protect them.
For them, it's not a safety issue. It's a political issue. They care about control—more of it. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearm freedom so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.
They want more restrictions on the law-abiding. Think about that. Their solution is to make you and me less free.
They want to sweep under the carpet the failure of school security, the failure of family, the failure of America's mental health system, and even the unbelievable failure of the FBI. They fantasize about more laws stopping what other laws fail to stop.
Laws succeed when people obey them. That's what the law-abiding majority practices. But once again, so many existing laws were ignored.
Their laws don't stop illegal criminals from crossing our borders every day. Their laws don't stop the scourge of gang violence and drug crime that savages Baltimore and Chicago and every major urban community. Their laws haven't stopped the plague of opioids and Chinese fentanyl from Mexico that flood American streets and kill victims every single day. No wonder law-abiding Americans revere their Second Amendment freedom to protect themselves—now more than ever.
They don't care if their laws work or not—they just want to get more laws to get more control over the people. But the NRA does care. We are Americans who continue to mourn, care and contribute real solutions to this very real problem. Real, practical action to truly protect our children.
Think about it. It is a bizarre fact that, in this country, our jewelry stores are more important than our children. Our banks, our airports, our NBA games, our NFL games, our office buildings, our movie stars, our politicians—they are all more protected than our children at school.
Do we really love our money and our celebrities more than we love our children? Can we answer that question honestly, knowing that we surround and protect so much with armed security while we drop our kids off at schools—those so-called gun-free zones—that are wide open targets for any crazed madman bent on evil to come there first.
In every community in America, school districts and PTAs, teachers' unions and local law enforcement, and moms and dads must come together to implement the very best strategy to harden their schools including effective, trained armed security that will absolutely protect every innocent child. And that has to happen now. Evil walks among us and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids.
The whole idea from some of our opponents that armed security makes us less safe is ridiculous. If that's true, remove it from everywhere—from the White House, from Capitol Hill, from all of Hollywood.
Any American school that needs immediate professional consultation and help with organizing and defining these solutions should call the NRA National School Shield Program and we will provide immediate assistance, absolutely free. That is more than anybody at the Democrat National Committee or NBC News or The Washington Post is offering.
The shameful politicizing of tragedy is a classic strategy right out of the playbook of a poisonous movement.
In my three decades of leading the NRA, I've had the pleasure of working with a number of Democrats who believed America to be the greatest country in the world because of our free-market capitalism and individual constitutional freedom. But during the last decade—the Obama decade—many of those leaders have been forced out as a tidal wave of new European-style socialists have seized control of the Democrat Party.
Obama's promised fundamental transformation of our country began with his own national party—a party that is now infested with saboteurs who don't believe in capitalism, don't believe in the Constitution, don't believe in our freedom and don't believe in America as we know it. Obama may be gone, but their utopian dream for America marches on.
And President Trump's election, while critical, can't turn away the wave of these new European-style socialists bearing down upon us. I’m not just talking about Bernie Sanders—he's near the end of his career.
Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bill DeBlasio, Andrew Cuomo, Corey Booker, Christopher Murphy and Keith Ellison. They are not Democrats in the mold of John F. Kennedy or Tip O'Neill. They hide behind labels like "Democrat," "left-wing" and "progressive" to make their socialist agenda more palatable.
That is terrifying. And that should terrify every citizen who values the American ideal of individual liberty.
They have politicized the Department of Justice, weaponized the Internal Revenue Service and the EPA, perhaps crippled the FBI and the intelligence community, and seized the embedded leadership of them all to advance their agenda. Absolute control of every corner of our government is their ultimate dream.
These intellectual elites think they're smarter than the rest of us, better than we are. The privileged and powerful think they deserve to be in charge of every lever of power.
The U.S. Constitution makes absolutely clear that they are not in charge—We the People are in charge! But Washington likes to ignore that.
Our intelligence community shrouds everything in secrecy, driving into darkness every dirty memo and every dirty institutional memory in the name of national security. But when the leaks come, as so often occurs, the light of day reveals nothing about the security of our country and everything about the corruption of those in power. That’s because in a captive society the loss of transparency results in the loss of truth. They also eliminate internal resistance of wrongdoing in these great institutions.
There is no stronger supporter of our law enforcement community than the NRA. There are tens of thousands of incredible men and women at the FBI. These are honorable, decent, hard-working people dedicated to keeping our country safe. But, as we've learned in recent months, even the FBI is not free of its own corruption, its own unethical agents.
I can understand a few bad apples in an organization as large as the FBI. But what is hard to understand is why no one at the FBI stood up and called BS on its rogue leadership.
Where was the systemic resistance and repulsion that should protect every powerful institution that serves us? The lowest ranking Marine knows to resist an unlawful order. The rank and file in every powerful institution must police its own leadership.
But in still too much of today's Washington, no one speaks out. No one challenges authority. Everyone keeps their mouths closed and their heads down and that is exactly how socialist societies function.
When leaders do whatever they want, when resistance and repercussion disappears, when the fundamental concept of moral behavior is expunged, the state rules the day and anyone who attempts to resist is smeared into submission.
Ah yes, we do live in the age of the socialist smear. The art of the smear. It doesn’t have to be true, it just has to stick somewhere, anywhere. It's designed to degrade and destroy all over the national media to serve their agenda.
Continues...
NRATV
If you have a mac open the link on FireFox. Link does not work for me on Safari.
