The following is a transcript of a statement released by NRA Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre in response to the shooting incident in a Louisiana theater that left two and the gunman dead, along with several others injured.
My fellow gun-toting, ammo-hoarding, God and Knock-Out Game fearing, red-blooded American patriots, I come to you now with a message. Many people in the mainstream, anti-gun media will tell be talking about something that happened in a Louisiana Theater this week. But I am here to tell you that nothing happened in a Louisiana theater last week, nothing at all.
There definitely wasn’t an incident that once again clearly shows how dangerously stupid a notion of a universal right to a gun is. Clearly nothing happened in that theater that demonstrates the outright ridiculousness of the notion that everyone — no matter their mental condition — should own a firearm. Most certainly two innocent people didn’t die, and nine others weren’t injured, as an undeniable result of people like me spending decades re-writing the narrative of the Second Amendment in a cynical and calculated way to drive up gun and ammunition sales.
Sure, if you look at things like statistics they’ll tell you that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings between 2009 and 2014 took place in private homes, not “gun free zones,” but let me ignore that fact to scare you, using bolded and all-caps letters a little bit, okay?
THE BAD MEN ARE OUT THERE! EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK! YOU NEED A GUN, IN YOUR HOME, IN YOUR CAR, ON YOUR PERSON AT ALL TIMES! WHAT IF THEY GET TO YOU WITH THEIR GUNS — THAT WE HELPED MAKE SURE THEY GOT ACCESS TO AS WELL, BUT WHATEVER — AND YOU DON’T HAVE A GUN TO COUNTER THEIR GUN WITH?! YOU COULD DIE IF YOU DON’T HAVE A WAY TO KILL THEM FIRST, PROVIDED THEY DON’T KILL YOU AND TAKE YOUR GUN FROM YOU OR SOME SUCH THING!
Okay, now that I have sufficiently scared you, let’s get back to talking about this non-incident that didn’t happen in Lafayette and even if it had it was just an isolated incident and most definitely not an indication of the culmination of two forces — the ubiquity of guns and the dearth of mental health care in this country — giving us all a clear example of what we should be working together to prevent as much as possible. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that a deranged, psychopathic racist, right-wing lunatic actually did go into a theater in Lafayette and start shooting. Let’s just say for the sake of argument he did kill two people and wound nine more. Let’s just say that he also then turned the gun on himself as cops were showing up.
Do you know what all of this would mean, if it were true, which of course it isn’t so you can just stop reading this right now and go back to “The O’Reilly Factor” or “The Megyn Files” if you want? Do you know what it would mean if all that had happened?
That’s right! It would mean that clearly not enough people were armed in the movie theater. Clearly not enough people thought to themselves, “You know, I’m going to go out and enjoy a funny movie with a room full of strangers who are all there to have a similar good time. But I don’t know if someone will be there to Knockout Game me or attack me while I watch said movie…I better bring my gun. Into the movie theater. That makes sense. Because things were better in the Wild West, even though even back then towns recognized the dangers of wanton gun violence and tried to regulate the carrying of firearms in public spaces too.”
What I’m trying to get at is that we need a fully armed populace. We need to live in a country so free you don’t feel free to leave your house without your gun anymore. Because nothing says “peace and tranquility” like “not knowing which asshole you pass on the street has the ability to blow you away before you even realize it,” of course. We all know the Second Amendment was written not to ensure that another invading and occupying country could take root, but instead as part of a backup plan to keep our government officials fully terrorized by the idea that their citizenry will come and fill them full of lead if they get an inkling that tyranny is about to happen.
What we don’t need is tighter gun laws, of course. Sure, Louisiana has the loosest gun laws in the country. Sure, that most definitely led to a guy like the shooter in this shooting — that again, didn’t actually happen — getting his hands on a gun. But laws don’t stop people from getting guns, because it’s my job to make sure they don’t. You’re welcome.
Sure, in this shooting event — THAT DIDN’T ACTUALLY HAPPEN SO SHUT UP! — cops responded so quickly that my line about “good guys with guns” being the only thing to stop a “bad guy with a gun” doesn’t really apply here. The good guys with guns arrived at the scene with such speed the shooter felt trapped and killed himself, thus proving that an OK Corral situation isn’t necessary to defuse a shootout. But that doesn’t mean I won’t use that line right now, fully and willfully ignoring that it doesn’t apply in this case, and I’m going to use it right now, and bold it, so that it stands out and sticks in your brains.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. And by “good guy” I mean any amateur, barely trained person who might be so scared they add to the crossfire and kill more innocent people, of course.
All of this is just silly speculation because again: nothing happened in Lafayette. There was not another multiple-homicide shooting spree that should make you stop and pause and really consider whether guns need to be a part of our common culture so much anymore. There was not a shooting that once again demonstrates why it’s all well and good to speak in lofty idealistic terms about the right to bear arms for everyone but in practice it needs, just like every other right and freedom bestowed to us, a governor or limitation for common sense situations like violent sociopaths.
The bottom line really is a simple one, and I’ll leave you with this: if you’re not going to consider your American Freedom to own a gun no matter how mentally-ill or unstable you are — think of my bosses, will you? Think of those sad, sad profit margins. All they want to do is grow up to be big, fat profit margins. The only way to ensure that is to keep you all scared out of your wits about roving gangs of kids with guns (and don’t ask us how those kids got those guns), terrorists, and most important the government itself. Sure, we have a large standing army and huge police forces to help keep us safe, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t own 25 guns to protect yourself, does it? That doesn’t make you a stark, raving mad lunatic for taking the idea of self-defense to a ridiculous extreme does it?
Of course it doesn’t.
So remember — nothing happened in the theater in Lafayette. Just like nothing happened at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, the DC Naval shipyards, the First Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Fort Hood, or in any of the more than 100 mass shootings since Obama took office. And if anything did happen there it was just the kind of thing that has happens as a consequence of living in the freest, most amazing country in the world, and most definitely isn’t the kind of thing we should be thinking about solutions for, because you just have to accept that sometimes people will express their Second Amendment rights all over a movie theater, or a school yard or their living room while their family watches TV.
God Bless America, God Bless Freedom, and God Bless Firearms!
