On Saturday, during his speech at the NRA’s annual convention gun lovefest, Wayne LaPierre asked, “How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?” This has shocked many, but not me.
After all, this is Wayne LaPierre we’re talking about, and while I’m disgusted by his comment, by linking his gun-rights fight to the Boston bombings he reminded me of Martin Richard, the sensitive 8-year old boy whose sign “No More Hurting People” is forever stamped on our collective consciousness.
LaPierre reminded me that in his short life Martin Richard knew more about compassion than the two Tsarnaev brothers who so ruthlessly planned and succeeded in killing innocent people. But LaPierre also made me realize that Martin Richard, in making his sign, showed infinitely more compassion than what the NRA and its cronies have shown to all the victims of gun violence, and especially to the Sandy Hook Elementary families.
It is unfathomable to me how the NRA can remain so untouched by the massacre of 20 children in Newtown, their teachers, and the thousands that die every day from gun violence. How is it possible that Wayne LaPierre who supported expanded background checks a few years back has adopted such an extreme position now?
How can he and the NRA leadership have executed a vicious marketing campaign that distorted the Senate bill on expanded background checks and then gloat when it’s defeated? Wasn’t it the NRA’s Executive Director Chris Cox who said, “It was great to see the president throw a temper tantrum in the Rose Garden.” As if watching a President who was angry that criminals and the mentally ill can still buy guns online and at gun shows, without a background check, is something to rejoice about.
How can Sarah Palin, a mother, not support the efforts of a group of parents whose children’s bodies were returned to them riddled with bullets and those of a President who’s trying to prevent this from happening again? It seems that she prefers to have a blast at the NRA convention by stating that President Obama “writes the book on exploiting tragedy” and that he uses the Sandy Hook parents to further his political agenda.
Where is their compassion?
Wayne LaPierre has used the Boston Marathon bombings as a sales pitch for more guns. By doing this, he not only has shown a total lack of basic decency, he has shown something much more disturbing. When it comes to compassion, he and the NRA are not that different from the Tsarnaev brothers.
