Ann Althouse:
Read the transcript of what LaPierre said, if you haven’t already, so you know what the purveyors of outrage are characterizing for their readers.
Here’s the NYT editorial, which is entitled “The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole.”
[W]e were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant.
Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times….
We cannot imagine trying to turn the principals and teachers who care for our children every day into an armed mob….
He proposed a mob? This is a failure (or pretended failure) of imagination. What if those who worked in schools were offered training in weapons and permission to carry in schools if they could qualify — entirely optional? Is that idea obviously mendacious, delusional, and almost deranged? The NYT is hot to exclude it as something any sane person would even begin to contemplate. They’d like an instant crazy image of teachers gone wild.
People like Mr. LaPierre want us to believe that civilians can be trained to use lethal force with cold precision in moments of fear and crisis. That requires a willful ignorance about the facts.
If “civilians” can’t be trained, how can noncivilians be trained? And quite aside from how well people hit targets, isn’t the presence of an armed guard a deterrentfrom beginning an attack, and doesn’t pointing a gun at the criminal sometimes end his attack?
Moving on from the NYT, here’s Andrew Sullivan absorbing LaPierre into an all-out assault on the GOP titled “Enough!”: