NRA urges armed security guards at every school in US

With the Obama administration seeking to draft a bill to toughen gun control in the wake of the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, the National Rifle Association has objected to the move and proposes deploying armed security guards at all schools as the solution.

Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told a news conference Friday that the way to prevent a "second Adam Lanza," referring to the gunman in the Sandy Hook massacre, is to require armed security guards at all schools, saying Congress should pass laws to this end.

The statements were the first official response made by the association about the Newtown incident, and broadcast live across the nation.

LaPierre claimed that video games, movies and media that expose children to violence should be blamed for successive shooting incidents. He said the only method to stop "bad gunmen is good people with guns," thus reiterating the association’s conventional stance that “guns should be blocked with guns."

U.S. media reported that the association clearly expressed its intent not to back down even a single step, and that the government`s efforts to toughen gun regulation will face an uphill battle. The association has been blocking gun regulation by banking on its four million members and 35 million U.S. dollars in annual lobbying budget.

LaPierre`s comments generated a flurry of immediate condemnations across the nation. In an editorial entitled “The N.R.A. Crawls from its Hidey Hole” Saturday, The New York Times blasted the association as seeking to blindly protect its own interests.

A former police officer posted a comment on the editorial, saying, “If the NRA wants to grow children in a war-like environment, they are not Americans."

Two protesters held a rally with banners in the news conference before being removed.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said schools have many entrances and deploying armed security guards will cost massive amounts of money. Armed guards are deployed at a third of schools in the U.S., and deploying an additional armed guard at each of 100,000 schools would cost 7.9 billion dollars.

Amid the heated dispute over gun control, shooting incidents have occurred in succession. In western Pennsylvania at around 9 a.m. Friday, a man killed a woman and two men with a handgun before being shot to death by police. Successive shootings left one dead and four others injured in Atlanta.

kyle@donga.com