Surprising all who believed that the National Rifle Association would use the wake of the Newtown tragedy to take some responsibility for its role in the proliferation of gun violence—said people not being at all familiar with the NRA, or the contextual clues afforded by its being called the "National Rifle Association"—NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre used today's press conference to offer up a predictable harangue blaming violent movies and video games, while also predictably calling for more guns to stop those other guns.


"Here's another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse," said LaPierre, head of the powerful lobby that uses outlandish political donations and threats to ensure the continued flourishing of an industry that sells things to people whose sole design is to maim and kill, and which have been used repeatedly to sow violence against other people.

"Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away," LaPierre said while directing attention away from any discussion of meaningful change on gun policy and toward demonizing the media instead, with no trace of irony. As he spoke, the next gun-related atrocity arose in Pennsylvania.


Further demonstrating his own media savvy, LaPierre pointed to the still very influential and relevant "blood-soaked slasher films like American Psycho and Natural Born Killers that are aired like propaganda loops on ‘Splatterdays’"—referring to films that were released between one and two decades ago, and which paint despairing, dystopian pictures satirizing the very desensitization to violence by the media that LaPierre accused them of perpetuating, as well as to something called "Splatterdays" that seems to mostly consist of horror B-movies on The Movie Channel. As of press time, The Movie Channel had yet to apologize to the many, many victims of gun violence it had created.

LaPierre concluded his tirade—in which he also called violent movies "the filthiest form of pornography," and pointed to the media's "race to the bottom… to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes"—by calling for an armed guard to be placed into every single school by the end of the year, thus shredding any lingering sense that he has some modicum of self-awareness like a perfectly legal .223 caliber Bushmaster AR-15.


"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said the man who has very realistic ideas about the problem of gun violence, while condemning dangerously stupid Hollywood fantasies.