LaPierre now trying to exploit Boston tragedy with misleading rhetoric LaPierre now trying to exploit Boston tragedy with misleading rhetoric

The National Rifle Association is the master of obfuscation, falsification and propaganda.

The NRA strikes fear in the hearts of a lot of Americans and intimidates far too many elected officials.

The NRA wins political battles with those tactics, as it did last month when Congress failed to take any action to reduce gun violence, even in the emotional wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on Dec. 14.

And the lobbying arm of the American gun industry will continue to win those battles until the public stops believing the NRA rhetoric and enough politicians develop a spine.

Over the past five months, the NRA has shamelessly used the deaths of the 20 first-graders and six educators gunned down at Sandy Hook to push its own agenda of spreading gun ownership and boosting profits for the gun industry.

The answer to Sandy Hook, in the eyes of the NRA and its CEO, Wayne LaPierre, is more guns, which we fervently believe is exactly the wrong direction to head.

For the NRA, the answer is to turn American schools into armed fortresses, protected by paid armed guards, volunteer armed guards and armed administrators and teachers. A frightening prospect.

Now the NRA is fanning the flames of another tragedy -- the April 15 bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon -- to advance its argument that America needs more guns, not gun control.

"How many Bostonians wish they had a gun two weeks ago?" LaPierre asked rhetorically to a large, boisterous pro-gun crowd at the annual NRA convention in Texas last weekend.

"Boston proves it," he proclaimed. "When brave law enforcement officers did their jobs so courageously, good guys with guns stopped terrorists with guns."

Boston proves what?

That allowing every civilian free access to guns and ammunition would have prevented the bombings and saved lives?

That Boston would somehow had been a safer city if everyone had been toting guns?

That is absurd, and anyone who thinks about LaPierre's statements for just a moment will realize that.

The reality of the Boston bombings is that they would have occurred -- and just as many people would have died and been injured -- had everyone in the city been packing a gun that day.

The reality is that no armed civilian would have caught the bombers at the scene or in the immediate aftermath, because no one knew who they were.

The tragic reality is that being armed didn't save the life of the MIT police officer gunned down by the bombers, just as having armed guards on duty at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech didn't prevent massacres there.

The likelihood is that more lives would have been lost had armed vigilantes been out looking for the bombers instead of staying at home, as ordered by the police.

And the truth is that the "good guys" who stopped the terrorists were the police -- not armed civilians -- and nobody in this country is advocating that any restrictions be put on the purchase or use of guns by law enforcement personnel.

So how does all of this make a case against gun control?

It doesn't.

LaPierre is blowing smoke, and anyone who follows his act knows it.

Don't be taken in by the lies, the half-truths, the well-worn slogans spewed by the NRA. Think for yourself.

The United States is a violent country, and that culture of violence needs to be changed.

The solutions are many -- including sensible gun-safety laws, improved mental health treatment and a greater national focus on compassion and kindness -- and it will take a long time to get there.

But the path definitely does not include swallowing NRA propaganda and following its goal of arming America to the teeth.