Wayne LaPierre's miquotation of FDR's "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" that he attributes to Winston Churchill, which makes it only more laughable...
if people were able to see beyond their fear and ignorance that what he is saying is obvious bullshit.
Here is the actual speech made by FDR (his first inaugural address):
This is a good analysis of the use of fear to manipulate people. LaPierre wants people to be afraid since he knows scared people don't think very well.
FDR, on the other hand, is making a speech of reassurance and hope. FDR is trying to do the exact opposite of what LaPierre is doing (which probably would also be the case if Churchill had made such a speech--he would want people to be confident, not afraid).
The reality is that this is such blatantly obvious propaganda and fear mongering that this post should be unnecessary.
Unfortunately, it is necessary.
Propaganda is the use of emotions (in this case fear) to cause people to short circuit their intellect.
You're being played.
You would know that if you would sit back and use critical reasoning skills.
"We don't trust government, because government itself has proven unworthy of our trust. We trust ourselves and we trust what we know in our hearts to be right. We trust our freedom. In this uncertain world, surrounded by lies and corruption everywhere you look, there is no greater freedom than the right to survive and protect our families with all the rifles, shotguns, and handguns we want. We know in the world that surrounds us there are terrorists and there are home invaders, drug cartels, carjackers, knockout gamers, and rapers, and haters, and campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse our society that sustains us all."
National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre baselessly warned that proponents of stronger gun laws could implement a firearm "confiscation scheme" in his latest unhinged column for The Daily Caller.
Despite LaPierre's warnings of a draconian gun registration and confiscation scheme that he wrote "could happen to us if we fail to stand and fight," the plot LaPierre described is illegal under current federal law, has not been proposed by the supporters of stronger gun laws LaPierre singled out in his column, and would likely violate the United States Constitution.
LaPierre's column was published on August 19, the day before BuzzFeed reported that the NRA itself uses a variety of data collection methods to gather information on gun owners. In an article that described myriad ways the NRA collects data on gun owners, BuzzFeed contributor Steve Friess noted the tension between the NRA's warnings about government gun owner databases and the gun rights organization's own actions:
The National Rifle Association has rallied gun owners -- and raised tens of millions of dollars -- campaigning against the threat of a national database of firearms or their owners.
But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country's largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby's secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.
That database has been built through years of acquiring gun permit registration lists from state and county offices, gathering names of new owners from the thousands of gun-safety classes taught by NRA-certified instructors and by buying lists of attendees of gun shows, subscribers to gun magazines, and more, BuzzFeed has learned.
LaPierre's Daily Caller column is demonstrative of the outlandish gun registration and confiscation plots the NRA warns of while apparently simultaneously collecting information on gun owners for its own purposes.
A recent biography of NRA Fuhrer Wayne LaPierre shows light on his
character that reveals why he is so rabid on the topic of guns and their
control.
The new book entitled ‘LaPierre- Assault Mouth’, contains the following passages: Chapter 2, page 32, describes a shrieking 6 year old LaPierre running
rampant with a scissors in his hand. His teacher, Maura Tarala, trying
to take it from him, suddenly found she had a miniature Tasmanian Devil
on her hands.
“Wayne! Put that scissors down right now before you hurt somebody!”
No, I don’t have to!”
“Oh, yes you do, little man! I am the teacher!”
“You do not have full Congressional authority to do that! I have my rights!”
“Look here, you little brat. I am the authority here! You will do as I say and put those scissors down!”
“I will not! I don’t recognize your authority!”
Megyn Kelly was at her schizophrenic best as an actress. In the early moments of the video I thought she was going to cry over the passage of Connecticut's new gun laws. Then, a few minutes later she turned Wayne into the stuttering, bumbling, inept con-artist that he is.
Interrupting Wayne, she pointed out that Adam Lanza's mother was not a criminal or a mentally defective person. She was a law abiding gun owner. So, why would we think the limitation on magazine capacity would have made no difference?
All Wayne could do with that was stumble around and come back to the nonsensical refrain that criminals won't obey the laws.
Ironically, Wayne seems to be relying on an emotional appeal. That's what they always accuse us of, but in the opening minutes of this speech, it was all about emotion.
One big lie was that today gun ownership is at an all time high. Another was that the NRA is responsible for bringing gun accidents to an all time low.Imagine the hubris of taking credit for that.
At 7:00 he begins talking about background checks. Amazingly, La Pierre is still claiming they will never be universal because criminals won't participate. He and his listeners know very well that's not what is meant by "universal," yet they keep on with this straw-man. "Universal" means private sales included not that criminals will comply.
And of course no discussion of background checks would be complete without the insistence that the government's true motive is to have a gun registration. This is another straw-man as well as another emotional appeal. The CPAP crowd loved it.
Mental health records will never be a part of the system, says Wayne La Pierre. The crowd cheers in agreement. I guess they're purposely forgetting what happened in California the other day.
Sarcastically, he mocks the government's supposed attempts to stop gun violence by "building a list of all the good people." The problem with "all the good people" is twofold. 1. that group includes many who are not good. Every day we see them, the previously law abiding, behave badly with guns. In fact, most of the mass shootings are done by hidden criminals who, since they too are innocent until proven guilty, qualify just like everyone else for lawful gun ownership - Loughner, Holmes and Lanza to name just three.
And 2. "the good people" who own guns are the sole source of guns that flow into the criminal world. Through theft and above all through private sales, guns flow from the good guys to the criminals like the Mighty Mississippi. With sarcasm and mockery Wayne is trying to ignore the obvious fact that "the good gun owners" need to be controlled and regulated.
Furthering the straw-man argument that the government wants to register all guns, which is not the issue, we're talking about requiring background checks on private sales, La Pierre steps up the scare tactics with mention of The Mexicans, The Chinese hacking our data bases and the newspapers who will print the names. He actually says this is the governments ostensible reason, which makes no sense at all. Their real reason he insists with a catchy slogan is " to tax 'em, or to take 'em." The crowd loved it.
The reason is obviously something else, which the NRA is absolutely opposed to. It's to hold gun owners accountable when something wrong is done with their guns. It's that simple.
Insiders at the embattled National Rifle Association
say the organization is padding its claims of recent increases in
membership and say more members are leaving amid criticisms over
strident positions taken by controversial leader Wayne LaPierre. “In reality, our membership is probably dropping,” says one
embittered NRA staffer, who asked not to be identified. “It’s hard to
say because our membership department is always playing games with the
numbers.” Capitol Hill Blue has received several hundred emails from persons
who identify themselves as “former NRA members” who have left the
organization of protests over the group’s hard-core positions following
the increase in gun violence in schools. Another member who quit is Capitol Hill Blue founder and publisher
Doug Thompson, who dropped his life membership in the organization and
called LaPierre an “out of control egomaniac whose uncompromising
positions are damaging the image of law-abiding gun owners in America.”
I'm often the first one to call Conservatives on racism, but I have to say I dinn't see it in these remarks. Did you?
I suppose it could be argued, like Michael Moore did one time, that in the mind of most white people, who predominantly make up Wayne La Pierre's audience, the imagined looters or home invaders or criminals in general are usually black or Hispanic.
Nevertheless, it seems to me the Lefties are making too much of these comments by calling them racist.
In what he called “the happiest day of my life,” National Rifle
Association C.E.O. Wayne LaPierre marked Valentine’s Day by marrying his
longtime gun, an AK-47 assault rifle.
Mr. LaPierre grew emotional as he reminisced about meeting the firearm at a gun show in Alabama in 1991.
“The chemistry between us was amazing,” he said. “Our first weekend together, all we did was shoot.”
Marriage between a human and a gun is not legal in most states, a
situation that Mr. LaPierre bemoans: “For a lot of N.R.A. members it’s
the only intimate relationship they’re capable of.”
The wedding ceremony was attended by twenty-five of Mr. LaPierre’s guns and over two hundred members of Congress.
Wayne continues to teach by example. One of the most commonly used tricks of the pro-gun argument is to accuse the other side of that which they themselves are guilty of. He said the president "displayed a level of public deception that simply cannot be ignored." But Wayne is the master at this.
One deceptive item that he mentions quite frequently is that so few failed background checks end up in a prosecution for attempting to buy a gun illegally. This is supposed to represent some kind of failure of the system, but what he overlooks is that every one of those people DID NOT GET THE GUN. At least they did not get the gun from that dealer. They were forced to seek other sources or to simply do without.
In other words, the system works regardless of whether those folks are arrested for ATTEMPTING to buy a gun. It works because they were STOPPED from buying one.
Another deception, and for me the biggest one, is the "criminals won't submit to background checks therefore it can never be universal" nonsense. Jon Stewart ridiculed it best. This is based on the falsehood that all pro-gun folks like to perpetuate, that only already-convicted criminals do bad things with guns. It also glosses over the fact that the success of the background check system in stopping millions of prohibited persons from buying guns every year would be improved drastically if background checks were required for private sales thereby eliminating one of the other major sources of guns for prohibited persons.
This aired a week or so ago. It was the first time I saw that old clip of Wayne La Pierre supporting universal background checks. Since then it's been used several times. At one of them, Orlin said Wayne's not guilty of flip-flopping, like I'd said, but rather this shows an evolution in his thinking and he's just being honest about it.
What do you think?
Also, what do you think about the foolishness of claiming that criminals will not obey laws? Jon Stewart put that one down with a joke better than all our efforts to argue against its stupidity. Oftentimes the pro-gun folks say that one as a straw-man argument pretending that gun control folks are so naive that we believe it. In the Senate hearing, La Pierre seemed to be saying it seriously, hence Jon Stewart's joke.
How can anyone take the NRA seriously with leadership like that?
The National Rifle Association has released the text of NRA head Wayne LaPierre’s Senate testimony a day early.
And, unsurprisingly, he’s taking a defiant tone.
Perhaps most interestingly, LaPierre is prepared to attack not just
the proposed assault weapons ban, but also the universal background
checks that are perhaps the least controversial aspect of the current debate and the early focus of the White House. “And when it comes to the issue of background checks, let’s be
honest: Background checks will never be ‘universal,’ because criminals
will never submit to them,” LaPierre will say.
In this report of the upcoming statement by Wayne La Pierre, not only does he express the NRA's refusal to cooperate on background checks, but he does it in a less-than-honest way. The fact that criminals won't cooperate has nothing to do with it. By saying that, he attempts to paint gun control folks with the brush of stupidity, as if we really think criminals will be affected. Plus he deflects attention from the fact that law-abiding gun owners, who would be affected, are the source of criminal guns. In fact, private sales without background checks is one of the four ways in which guns move from lawful ownership into the black market.
Continuing in his mendacious way, La Pierre goes on to lament the mental health system and the criminal justice system, more deflection from the first main problem which is gun availability to unfit people.
Is it any wonder that gun rights advocates are so difficult to reason with? They have Wayne La Pierre showing them the way.
First, like many pro-gun folks they experienced severe embarrassment and
remorse for their role in the continuing spree shootings. And
secondly, and most importantly, it was a calculated maneuver in order to
give weight to the frequent and nonsensical "dancing in the blood"
attacks against liberals and gun control folks who were talking about
it.
2. "while some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain" is exactly what I expected. It's one of the reasons they remained silent. What gun control folks have done this week is not about political gain. It's about demanding changes that would make people safer.
Note to all pro-gun folks: at 18:00 Wayne admitted "violent crime is increasing again."
He spoke at some length about video games and he pointed out that the media doesn't know what it's talking about. He said one more law wont help since 20,000 have failed. All these remarks are diversions, desperate diversions to deflect attention from the real problem: easy access to guns by unfit people.
At 14:10 he reminded us that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." That's the biggest trick of all. As compelling as it is, the good guy with a gun would not be necessary if the bad guy didn't get one. In order to force this logic into something that resembles common sense, they insist that criminals will always get guns. This is a blatant lie and they know it. The UK has a 4 times lower murder rate than we do, largely due to the lower gun accessibility and Australia has completely eradicated mass shootings for the same reason.
Wayne seemed to be vaguely talking about arming teachers, yet he kept referring to putting police in every school. Either way, the whole speech was one big smokescreen. The first problem is the access to guns by unfit and dangerous people, something the NRA is directly responsible for. President Obama, and almost everyone else in the country, has been talking about the obvious solutions. This is what the fast-talking Wayne La Pierre desperately wants to avoid.
