it’s not true, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. […] There was a big spike in burglaries, as criminals picked through abandoned homes, Browne said. But all other crime categories were down. […] Overall, crime fell by 25%. And Browne delivered another inconvenient truth for the NRA man — the city actually went a record eight straight days without a single murder.

City officials dismissed that claim as more NRA nonsense and said there were plenty of armed National Guardsmen in the city in the aftermath of Sandy.

No thanks to Wayne LaPierre, who would have been out there blasting people like any good patriot should. All right, but surely that crazy liberal Bloomberg blocked the National Guard from showing up, right?Dammit, LaPierre, you really don't need to make things this easy.

All right, let's hear from an actual person whose business was broken into. Surely that person will agree that what the area needed was some gun-toting lunatics convinced, like LaPierre, that society had now crumbled and their only shot at survival was to go out and murder some folks before they got murdered back.



Even a crime victim said it didn’t look that bad. “There was no food or water, but you could still walk the streets at night,” said Ron Troyano, whose Joann’s Discount Wines and Liquor store actually was looted during Sandy. He called the break-in an aberration. “There was a cop on every street corner,” Troyano said. “It wasn’t that bad.”

His liquor store was robbed during the extended outages. According to Wayne LaPierre, that happened because this guy wasn't willing to sit in front of the door and patriotically shoot anyone who tried to come inside, which would have been a better outcome, according to LaPierre.

So let's see. One, the NRA spokesman is either a huge liar (huge!) or absolutely delusional. Two, he uses these delusions of supposed societal breakdowns to advocate for people buying more guns, and bigger guns. Three, the NRA gets a cut whenever anyone does. Four, the pictures he paints of supposed chaos where there is none are meant, by LaPierre's own words, to encourage other people to think about the circumstances under which they'd maybe need to start shooting a whole bunch of people, and to plan accordingly.

I don't care if we end up with a database of gun owners or a database of crazy, violent people, but Wayne LaPierre should only get to have his name on one of those, not both. Turn in your pop-pop toys, Wayne. We don't want you running around deciding who to shoot, because your judgment sucks.



Contact your senators or representative to demand they support the president's gun safety proposals. And send that all-important electoral message to the NRA by backing Robin Kelly in the IL-02 congressional district special election. You'll feel much better after doing all that!

