What was that?

Seriously, what was the National Rifle Association performing on Friday? I thought it was going to be a press conference. It wasn’t. I really don’t know how to describe it. A soliloquy of propaganda? A carnival of canards? A herding of scapegoats?

Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s executive vice president, blamed gun violence in general, and mass shootings in schools in particular, on everything except for the proliferation of brutally efficient, high-capacity guns and his organization’s efforts to resist virtually any restriction on people’s access to those weapons.

It was an appalling display of deflection and deception. So much smoke and so many mirrors.

He blamed American culture, and the media, and video games and even natural disasters. But not a society saturated with guns that spray bullets the way that Super Soakers spray water and have made us the embarrassment of the developed world.