In a Wednesday column on Talking Points Memo, Occidental College politics professor Peter Dreier asserted that those who believe New York mayor Bill de Blasio was partly responsible for the December 20 murder of two NYPD officers should instead “point the finger of blame” at the National Rifle Association.
Dreier wrote that while “it was [Ismaaiyl] Brinsley who pulled the trigger…the NRA and its Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre also have blood on their hands...For decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely that people like Brinsley would be able to obtain a gun.”
Even though the NRA’s “arguments are bogus,” opined Dreier, it “has the money, and a small but committed hard core of members, to translate [its] idiot ideas into political clout to thwart even reasonable gun-control laws.”
From Dreier’s piece (emphasis added):
It's been more than a week since Ismaayl Brinsley, a deranged man with a long criminal record, murdered two New York City police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, in cold blood, but so far we haven’t heard a word from the National Rifle Association.
It was Brinsley who pulled the trigger on the silver Taurus semiautomatic handgun that he used to kill the two officers, but the NRA and its Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre also have blood on their hands…LaPierre likes to fulminate about gun owners' rights. But he's been silent on the ambush of the two New York cops…
If [Rudy] Giuliani and [police-union head Patrick] Lynch want to point the finger of blame for policies that put police in harm’s way, they should focus on the NRA, not de Blasio. For decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely that people like Brinsley would be able to obtain a gun…
The NRA has two kneejerk [arguments]…The first is that the Second Amendment gives all Americans the right to possess guns of all kinds—not just hunting rifles, but machine guns and semi-automatics…
The second is the cliché that "guns don't kill people, people kill people"…
Both of these arguments are bogus, but the NRA has the money, and a small but committed hard core of members, to translate these idiot ideas into political clout to thwart even reasonable gun-control laws…
Thanks to the NRA, it is no accident that the United States ranks first in the world—by a wide margin—in gun-related civilian deaths and injuries. Compared with every other democracy, we have the most guns per capita and the weakest gun laws. But the danger isn't simply the number of guns; it is the type of guns we allow people to legally purchase. Other countries permit hunting rifles. But the NRA believes that Americans have a right to own an assault weapon…
Under LaPierre's leadership, the NRA has not only dramatically expanded the its ties to the gun manufacturers, but has also linked the NRA to the far right, including the Tea Party. LaPierre is a regular presence at gatherings of extreme right-wing groups, whose paranoid warnings about the threat of tyranny and Obama's secret plan to confiscate all guns are meant to scare Americans into buying more guns and joining the NRA…
Every American grieves for the families and friends of the two police officers killed in New York City on December 20. But until we tame the power of the NRA, we can expect more killings like this – a part of the deadly daily diet of murders throughout America committed by angry gun-toting people whose "freedom" to own weapons of mass destruction the NRA defends.
