School administrators and the school board president of the Culver City Unified School District soundly rejected National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre’s call to have armed security guards on theirs and other campuses throughout the nation.
LaPierre, in a combative Dec. 21 news conference in Washington D.C., called out several entities that he considers the main culprits in the tragedy that occurred in Newtown, Conn on Dec. 14 when Adman Lanza, 20, committed a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 children and eight adults.
The NRA executive rejected outright any discussion on gun reform legislation.
Polls show after the Newtown murders that a majority of the public favor some form of gun reform, especially on the type of weapon used by Lanza, an AR-15 rifle.
He castigated politicians and the makers of violent video games and said “genuine monsters” like Lanza walk among law abiding citizens every day and the only was to deal with them was with more guns.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre told the audience of reporters.
The NRA executive also challenged Congress to put armed security guards “in every school in the United States.”
Culver City Unified School District Board of Education President Katherine Pasaplis called LaPierre’s recommendation “a ridiculous proposition” to which she is adamantly opposed to. “We need to an assault weapons ban as well as a ban on clips that come with large numbers of bullets,” the board president added.
CCCUSD Superintendent David LaRose was also not persuaded by LaPierre’s calls for armed guards. “That would not be my first agenda item (for improving school safety,” La Rose said.
LaPierre also addressed his organization’s silence on the Newtown shooting until a week after the killings transpired. “While some have tried to exploit this tragedy for political gain, we have chosen to remain respectfully silent,” he said. “But now we must speak.”
Paspalis noted that there was an armed security guard present when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 12 of their classmates and one teacher in the April 20, 1999 Columbine High School massacre that also left 21 students injured. And there where also armed university police during the nation’s largest mass killing, the 2007 Virginia Tech University slaying where 32 students where killed.
“Guns do not stop tragedies… they more often create them,” Paspalis asserted.
LaPierre also lashed out at safe school sites, Hollywood producers and a usual NRA straw man, the media, for its “complicity” in what he called “a corrupting, shadowing influence” on the public.
“The media acts as silent enablers” in promoting violent video games and movies, LaPierre said. “The media demonize lawful gun owners instead rather than face their own moral failures.”
Paspalis was not surprised at LaPierre’s remarks. “He brought out every straw man that he could in order to distract from what is really needed, which is a serious discussion about gun control,” she countered.
On “Meet the Press” on Dec. 23, LaPierre doubled down on his earlier remarks. “If it’s crazy to want to put an armed police officer in every school in America, then call me crazy,” the NRA executive responded to a question by host David Gregory.
LaRose sent a letter to parents of students in the school district before the holiday break regarding new actions that the district will take in the new year on school security.
“It is most often the acts of others that shake our sense of safety and I, like you, have been shaken by the unthinkable, heartbreaking act of terrorism that targeted our children. And while the act shakes us, it also calls us and challenges us to act,” he wrote.
“I believe that our hope and sense of safety is restored by our own actions, commitments and investments (of our thoughts, resources and time). I assure you, we have acted and will act assertively to learn from the Newtown tragedy and to become even more diligent in our communication, training, resources and inter-agency cooperation. Nothing is more important.”
The superintendent said school district officials have ordered additional video cameras for school office/entry points, conducted initial site walk-throughs to evaluate potential safety needs, increased police presence and patrols through our great partnership with Culver City Police Department among other things.
“I have met with (Police Chief Donald Pedersen) on two occasions to deepen our understanding of our current practices and potential shared interests and will continue this dialogue as a regular objective rather than a response to a crisis,” LaRose added.
Estimates on the cost of posting armed guards at all of the nearly 100, 000 public schools in the U.S. stand at approximately $7 billion.
