Another NRA Extremist Joins Wayne LaPierre in Advocating for Still More Gun Toting — this Time in Elementary Schools — Republican Representative Louie Gohmert and His Impractical Idea about How the Sandy Hook Elementary Tragedy Could Have Been Prevented

17 December 2012

This essay refers to the shooting of 26 innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School (Connecticut)

For background, see Wikipedia, here.

Today’s theme — a repeat of what I said after the NFL’s Jovan Belcher shot and killed his significant other, Kasandra Perkins, and then himself

Regarding public health honesty:

If we are going to carry guns around, we had better be intellectually honest about the public health price they extract in one of the most violent economically developed cultures on the planet.

Which brings me to the (illustrative) point — the symbolizing insanity that comes from the National Rifle Association, in the form of Chief Denier in Charge, Wayne LaPierre.

Here is what Mr. LaPierre said about the Belcher-Perkins sadness:

"The one thing missing in that equation is that woman owning a gun so she could have saved her life from that murderer," LaPierre told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday.

The impracticality of Wayne LaPierre’s solution to gun violence

What the Mr. LaPierre apparently missed was the real world significance of the fact that Belcher and Perkins were lovers, who had a child.

To implement LaPierre’s suggestion, Ms. Perkins would have had to carry a firearm with her at all times. Including in bed (presumably with Mr. Belcher), during love-making, and while asleep.

After LaPierre’s inane statement, came the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

Yet, even that atrocity apparently had no ameliorating effect on the “more guns, the better” philosophy of the NRA and its fellow riders.

To wit, Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert:

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, said Sunday that he wished Dawn Hochsprung, the principal of the Sandy Hook Elementary School, had been armed on Friday with an M-4 assault rifle to counter Adam Lanza, the alleged shooter who killed 20 children and seven other adults.

"I wish to God she had an M-4 in her office locked up — so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands," Gohmert said on "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace.

"But she takes him out, takes his head off, before he can kill those precious kids."

“Lamentable Louie” joins “Witless Wayne” in America’s Hall of the Most Stupid

What Lamentable Louie apparently does not understand is that:

(1) a locked up firearm does its owner no self-defense good,

and

(2) do we really want principals and teachers to carry guns?

Louie’s lame-brained thinking — Problem One — no warning

It is almost certain that the (apparently) crazed Sandy Hook gunman either:

(a) burst in on Principal Hochsprung without warning

(b) escalated to deadly violence in an unpredictable fashion.

Having had considerable street experience in dealing with armed crazies, I can attest to the fact that if someone wants to shoot you out of the blue, you will more often than not have little or no warning. And, even if you do, you will need loads of training and physical experience to control or confine the situation.

Even after my medical school clinical psychiatric rotation, I still consider many severely mentally ill people to be unpredictable in their actions. Competent psychiatrists are often unable to assess the future danger that many patients pose themselves and others.

Are we really going to ask principals and teachers to emulate the mental and physical skill sets that police have in dealing with deadly violence?

Pertinent here, one of my objections to the proliferation of concealed carry permits in the United States is the absurdity of thinking these abbreviated training courses really qualify their (psychologically unselected) permit holders to properly employ a firearm in deadly situations.

At the time that I was training police, the nation’s law enforcement agencies were washing 20 percent of their already psychologically winnowed recruits out of the Patrol training process, due to previously undiscovered unsuitabilities of one kind or another.

To think that just anybody can carry a firearm and properly use it in deadly force situations defies decades of American police experience.

Louie’s lame-brained thinking — Problem Two — do we really want more guns and questionably competent gun-wielders in schools?

A trained and armed cop in school is one thing. But combining curious school-aged children with a ready supply of on-person and/or cabinet-held firearms just invites trouble.

Asking teachers and principals to take on the added responsibilities of:

being good with firearms — an M-4 assault carbine, at that, according to Gohmert,

securing them properly,

and

knowing when to dispense deadly self-defense

seems a bit much.

Especially so, because teachers and principals almost always enter this most patient of helping professions with innate discomfort for the militaristic mindset that most (of us) law enforcement people exhibit.

The moral? — Wayne LaPierre and Louie Gohmert exemplify the antisocial element that dominates extremist gun rights thinking

As President Obama said last night (transcript here), and conservative Republican Joe Scarborough courageously followed up on this morning, we can do better. Even within our Constitutional framework.

PeteFree.com

Another NRA Extremist Joins Wayne LaPierre in Advocating for Still More Gun Toting — this Time in Elementary Schools — Republican Representative Louie Gohmert and His Impractical Idea about How the Sandy Hook Elementary Tragedy Could Have Been Prevented