Police at the scene where a man rammed his pick-up truck into a state trooper’s car, after killing three people in rural Pennsylvania. The gunman was then killed after firing at police.
(AP)
WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association broke its silence on the Newtown school massacre by today calling for armed guards in the nation’s schools rather than more gun control — just as news broke that a gunman shot dead three people and was then killed by cops in Pennsylvania.
N.R.A. top lobbyist Wayne LaPierre made the call for weapons in schools at a highly-anticipated press conference in Washington, D.C., in the gun lobby’s first public statement since madman Adam Lanza gunned down 20 children and six staffers at a Connecticut elementary school last week.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Wayne LaPierre, said.
Earlier in Pennsylvania, a man fatally shot a woman decorating for a children’s Christmas party at a tiny church hall and killed two men elsewhere before he was fatally shot in a gunfight with state troopers.
The shootings began in Frankstown Township at about 9 a.m. and investigators were processing five crime scenes within about a 1.5-mile radius, authorities said at a news briefing this afternoon.
A prosecutor said that there “might be some relation” between at least two of the victims in and around the tiny village in Geeseytown, about 70 miles west of Harrisburg. The names of the victims and the gunman weren’t immediately released.
The woman at Juniata Valley Gospel Church had cooked food the day before for the funeral of the longtime pastor, said the Rev. James McCaulley, his brother. McCaulley said the gunman first fired through the church windows, then entered and shot one of two women before fleeing.
The gunman then crashed his pickup truck head-on into a state trooper’s car, and fired at police who then killed him, police said. A state trooper was shot in the bulletproof check and wrist, another was injured in the crash, and a third was hurt by breaking glass during the firefight.
In calling for armed guards in schools, the NRA’s LaPierre said the step would have an immediate impact in protecting children.
“You know, five years ago after the Virginia Tech tragedy when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy,” he said. “But what if, what if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday he’d been confronted by qualified armed security?”
LaPierre said “the next Adam Lanza,” the man responsible for last week’s mayhem, is planning an attack on another school.
“How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark,” LaPierre said. “A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”
LaPierre also blamed violent video games and movies. “There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people,” he said.
“In a race to the bottom, many conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society, by bringing an even more toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty right into our homes,” LaPierre said.
He refused to take any questions after speaking. Though security was tight, two protesters were able to interrupt LaPierre’s speech, holding up signs that blamed the NRA for killing children. Both were escorted out, shouting that guns in schools are not the answer.
The protesters also shouted that the gun rights group had “blood on its hands.”
The NRA’s answer to the hidden threat of deranged, lone gunmen was widely panned by Democrats as well as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who called the speech “a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country.”
The mayor, who has repeatedly called for more gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre, went on to say the NRA “offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more violent America.”
Senator-elect Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, tweeted this reaction: “Walking out of another funeral and was handed the NRA transcript. The most revolting, tone deaf statement I’ve ever seen.”
Since the slayings, President Obama has demanded “real action, right now” against US gun violence and called on the NRA to join the effort. Moving quickly after several congressional gun-rights supporters said they would consider new legislation to control firearms, the president said this week he wants proposals to reduce gun violence that he can take to Congress by January.
Obama has already asked Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and pass legislation that would stop people from purchasing firearms from private sellers without a background check. Obama also has indicated he wants Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity magazines.