Saturday, December 22, 2012
WASHINGTON — Seven days after the massacre of 26 children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association called Friday for the placement of armed guards in all of the nation’s roughly 100,000 schools.
The powerful pro-gun group said more watchmen with weapons are needed to increase school safety.
The NRA also named Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, to lead a study on school security.
The lobbying group introduced Hutchinson, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief and high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official, during a news conference Friday.
Hutchinson called for the creation of cadres of armed volunteers to patrol school campuses.
“I took this assignment on one condition: that my team of experts will be independent and guided solely on what are the best security solutions for our children while they are at school,” he said.
After school massacres near Jonesboro in 1998, in Columbine, Colo., in 1999 and at Virginia Tech in 2007, gun-control supporters have urged more restrictions on firearms.
As Newtown continues to bury its dead, several congressmen are weighing in on new gun-control laws.
Some have warned that new laws are unnecessary and unconstitutional. Others say the focus should be on mental health, not new weapons restrictions.
A few, including Arkansas’ U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, a Democrat, say they’re rethinking their opposition to new gun control legislation.
After its initial silence, which the group said was out of respect for the dead, the NRA responded to the tragedy with an assertion that placing armed guards in schools is the best way to prevent future school rampages.
In a speech in which he blamed gun violence on the media and violent video games, Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president, called upon Congress to pass legislation that would pay to put police officers in every school in the nation.
He said his organization would spend “whatever the task requires” to fund the group Hutchinson would lead, which he called The National School Shield.
LaPierre accused critics of trying “to exploit tragedy for political gain.”
“Politicians pass laws for gun-free school zones,” LaPierre said. “They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them, and in doing so, they tell every insane killer that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”
Hutchinson said he would develop a plan for the NRA and begin recruiting security experts over the next week as he works to develop a school safety strategy.
He said the use of armed volunteers would eliminate the need for “massive” federal or state funding to pay for more school guards. In addition to guards, he envisioned an increase in the use of surveillance cameras and “biometric” identification devices (such as retina scans) in schools.
Hutchinson said the Watch Dog Dads of Bentonville, Ark., a group that seeks to provide positive role models for youths, illustrates how volunteers in a community can help students on campus while also keeping an eye out for suspicious behavior.
Armed and unarmed volunteers can identify strangers on campus and be trained on what to do in an emergency.
“Whether they are retired police, retired military or rescue personnel, I think there are people in every community of this country who would be happy to serve if only someone asked them, and gave them training and certification to do so,” Hutchinson told reporters Friday. “The National Rifle Association is the natural, obvious choice.”
The NRA sells a catalog of training materials, and athletic apparel and tote bags for teachers and students, LaPierre said, and the organization is poised to provide firearm training to help secure the nations estimated 98,817 public schools.
“Our training programs are the most advanced in the world,” LaPierre said.
In addition to its training and gun-safety programs, the NRA is a political powerhouse that claims 4 million members. In the political cycle that ended in November, organizations associated with the group - the NRA Institute for Legislative Action and the NRA political action committee - spent more than $18 million to support candidates and political issues, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks money in politics.
In an interview, Hutchinson avoided questions about possible gun-control legislation.
“My responsibility is not to engage in that side of the debate,” he said.
Hutchinson, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican contender in the 2014 Arkansas gubernatorial race, said his new assignment “has no long-term impact on any decision I might make in that regard.”
Hutchinson, who runs a law firm and security consulting business in Rogers, Ark., ran unsuccessfully for Arkansas governor in 2006.
About 200 print and broadcast journalists attended Friday’s NRA news conference in the tony Willard Intercontinental, a hotel one block from the White House.
LaPierre said society has left children defenseless.
“The monsters and the predators of the world know it and exploit it. That must change now. The truth is ....”
At that point a man stood up in front of the assembled journalists and unfurled a red banner that read “NRA Killing Our Kids.”
The man shouted: “We’ve got to end the violence, We’ve got to stop the killing.”
Three men in suits with NRA lapel pins grabbed the man and carried him out of the room as he yelled, “They are the perpetrators of the crimes that are taking place in our schools and in our streets.”
As the ruckus continued outside of the hotel ballroom, LaPierre did not acknowledge the interruption and picked up exactly where he left off, with a call for a national database of the mentally ill.
“The truth is our society is populated with an unknown number of genuine monsters,” he said.
In opening and closing the event, NRA President David Keene said his organization wants to be part of the “conversation” on school violence. As he and LaPierre left the stage, Keene did not respond to questions shouted by journalists.
“We will not be taking questions,” he said.
An Arkansas teacher’s union official rejected the gun group’s plan for armed school patrols.
Schools would be safer if they could hire more social workers and counselors, said Donna Morey of Little Rock, the president of the Arkansas Education Association.
“We don’t think more guns in schools is the answer,” she said in a telephone interview.
As Hutchinson and the NRA prepare to address school security, members of Congress are readying gun-related legislation to be introduced in January during the next session of Congress.
Arkansas’ Ross, who announced his retirement from the House this year and will not be part of that debate, has long prided himself on his “A” rating from the NRA.
In 2009, Ross led 65 other pro-gun-rights Democrats who pressed Attorney General Eric Holder not to reinstate a ban on assault weapons.
Two years later, he authored legislation, which did not make it out of committee, that would have relaxed gun ownership laws in Washington, D.C.
But since the massacre in Connecticut, Ross, who is co-chairman of the House Sportsmen’s Caucus, said he is now open to further restrictions on gun ownership, including a ban on high-capacity machine guns.
Since he was elected in 2000, Ross said the attitude among gun proponents was that if anti-gun groups “get a foot in the door, that means they’re going to go after everything, and your hunting rifle is next.”
“It’s time to move beyond that,” he said. “It’s time for both sides of the gun issue to put down the talking points and the hyped-up rhetoric and have an honest conversation.”
Other members of the Arkansas delegation said increasing gun restrictions could violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which sets forth the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
Rep. Rick Crawford, a Jonesboro Republican, said the Connecticut killings were a “sensitive issue” in his district because of the 1998 killings of four students and one teacher at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro.
He said he fears that last week’s school rampage will result in “knee-jerk” reactions among lawmakers to write new laws.
“We already have a lot of gun laws on the books, and it appears that we’re not rigidly enforcing them,” he said.
Crawford said his view is informed by his wife, Stacy, who used to be a social worker in Jonesboro’s schools. He said the key to preventing gun violence is to identify at-risk students and make sure they don’t “fall through the cracks.”
Ross agreed that improving mental-health diagnosis and treatment is important. But, he said, the Sandy Hook school killings broke his heart. He said he has changed his mind about gun control and has decided that new gun restrictions are necessary.
“This is not the same America I grew up with,” he said. “I wish it was.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/22/2012