No. 8: Gun Hubris

“The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters. They walk among us every single day.” -  Wayne LaPierre, December 2012

Branch Davidian compound, Waco, TX , April 19, 1993

Twenty years ago, Wayne LaPierre gained a lot of attention demonizing the ATF after the disastrous siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. But history quickly forgot the names of the four ATF Agents, Conway LeBleu, Todd McKeehan, Robert Williams and Steven Willis, who died there on the ground doing a job that required exceptional bravery. That kind of character is alien to cowards like LaPierre. He couldn't imagine their final moments before Davidians shot and killed them because he was too busy pissing himself in a corner, distancing the NRA leadership from accountability. LaPierre's stunning cowardice allowed him to ignore the sensibility of families that awaited the safe return of those four men that day.

What the NRA wants you to believe happened at Waco.

LaPierre was unmoved by the plight of 25 innocent children who perished at Waco, too. Forensic pathologists determined five were executed with guns that belonged to adult cult members. LaPierre's concern subordinated their loss to focus on the larger campaign. Unfettered access to guns for everyone.  Even mad men like David Koresh.

LaPierre's extraordinary lack of remorse is well documented. In 1995 he signed an NRA fundraising letter that played off Waco and recklessly depicted those four dead agents as Gestapo-like “jackbooted government thugs.”  In a moment that can only be described as watershed, the NRA rank and file took seriously his call to action. Former U.S. soldier Timothy McVeigh was so inspired by LaPierre's vitriol he ignited a truck bomb at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing another 169 people, including 19 more small children.  The national discourse crashed so hard it ejected me clear of the AWSD wreckage I dragged through half my life. The face of gun culture changed that day.  It became vile and detestable and I dreamt of its eventual down fall.

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How the NRA wants you to respond to the ATF.

Fast forward two decades to Sandy Hook. A disturbed young man and his emotionally vulnerable mother didn’t project menace and mayhem like jack boot thugs. Sandy Hook presented an exhausted and infirm LaPierre nothing from which he could spin a yarn.  

LaPierre’s talent for hyperbole would be wasted if he attempted a rational discourse on Adam’s pathology. His biggest concern was that none of it would sell more guns.

With his back against the wall once again LaPierre did what desperate pitchman do. He resorted to fear billing Adam Lanza as a “genuine monster.” It whipped up the fringe base and distracted attention from the role played by Adam’s Mom, the sane one.  

But a genuine monster is a genuine contradiction. Outside of fiction, grownups know that monsters don’t exist. To any clear-eyed observer, the real horror show took place at that beltway conference room when LaPierre got away without telling the real story; the other more tragic one about mental health care and unfettered access to guns.

LaPierre omitted the tale of everyone’s Chardonnay sippin, Bushmaster lovin sweetheart, Nancy Lanza. Nancy, not Adam, set the stage for that cruel slaughter. She epitomized the phrase "single point of failure."  It had nothing to do with how she treated her son's worsening condition or whether his name was omitted from some cobbled database.  She suffered undiagnosed Affective Weapon Spectrum Disorder. Under emotional duress brought about by the insidious gun industry she was convinced she needed high-power semi-automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines and lots of ammo for home defense.

Gun safety inside Nancy Lanza's home

And against what?  The quiet streets of Newtown weren't synonymous with roaming packs of "genuine monsters." Moreover, she was so stricken with fear of the world outside, she gave her troubled son Adam working knowledge and, evidently, clear access to the weapons he used. In Wayne LaPierre's parallel universe Nancy wasn't afflicted, she was exercising her a God-given right. 

Precisely because she appeared so ordinary to so many, Nancy Lanza best illustrates how treating all law-abiding citizens the same no longer works. Prevailing political attitudes paid for by the consumer gun industry place the rest of civil society at the mercy of baffling, unpredictable and increasingly lethal human behavior. Too many basic failures must be solved before we can even begin to tackle the complex combination of gun over-saturation and the current state of mental healthcare in the United States.
Is the gun industry making any genuine effort to solve for either?  GOP lawmakers?  Nope. 

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"Every single major Republican is calling our gun crisis a 'mental health' crisis, while AT THE SAME TIME suing to remove mental health coverage from the Affordable Care Act.

"That's how you know they're lying."  - @Mikel_Jollett

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Trademark LaPierre crazy-guy rage

No one personifies this nightmarish state of affairs better than the reigning king of untreated mental illness, Wayne LaPierre. He made a comfortable existence obscuring his own disability on behalf of a grateful gun industry. But time has taken a toll.  When he stood before the cameras after Sandy Hook warning about the countless monsters walking among us, did LaPierre believe he saw them coming toward him?  Maybe he was experiencing flashbacks from NRA board meetings.

Fortunately, most mentally ill are at a very low risk of becoming violent. The prospect for recovery is greater than at any time in the last 50 years, so for LaPierre, there is hope.

But for those who don't seek treatment and support from professionals, who don't recover from their first episode of illness, who don’t take their meds, these people are exposed to a host of threats like homelessness, violence, incarceration and tragic, preventable forms of death.

One statistic that doesn't receive enough attention, and that applies to both sides of the gun debate, is that gun owners with untreated or under treated mental illness are far likelier to kill themselves than they are to kill someone else.

LaPierre set a pathetic tone at that Sandy Hook debrief based on his own willful ignorance. Rather than championing the cause of mental healthcare like he purported to, he attacked a young man whose timely treatment might have spared so much pain and misery, not only for himself but for an entire community. LaPierre stupidly advanced an unhelpful stereotype. The reaction to his cheap rhetoric should be outrage that extends beyond the stars. Instead it just sold more guns and ammo.