NRA's response shameful
On Dec. 22, 2012, a Quickvote question in The Newnan Times-Herald showed a positive response to the NRA offer to arm officers for our schools. I support the Second Amendment’s Right to Bear Arms. I have guns in my home for protection. But NRA’s callous and unfeeling response to the incident at Newtown, Conn., was shameful.The NRA has done nothing in the last 20 years to promote or help establish a national data base for the mentally ill. What good would it do? A similar database for sex offenders has done little to nothing to stop sex crimes against our children.
In order to prevent you must know where these assault weapons are, and it comes from a statewide weapons registry. But the NRA has been first in line to block, protest and try to repel any weapons registry across the country. Most recently was Michigan, where the state police credited the gun registry with help in solving shooting crimes. However, the NRA does maintain a registry of gun ranges for its members.
As for police officers in school, in the original 1994 crimes bill by President Bill Clinton, the original ban on assault weapons, the bill included a “Community Oriented Policing Services” that would put armed police in schools. But the NRA opposed, protested, put millions of dollars toward lobbyists to fight this bill. Later the NRA mocked the program for not working after funding was cut by the GOP controlled Congress.
As a gun owner, I would be the first in line to sign the registry. I feel the NRA has lost its vision and leadership to try and promote the same program it opposed as its answer to gun control and safety in our schools.
Rick Page, Newnan
