Vice President Mike Pence
Vice President Mike Pence will be a keynote speaker at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Dallas this week, and unlike the rest of the convention’s events, guns will not be allowed.
The vice president will speak at the NRA Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum at the convention May 4 as part of a “powerful lineup of pro-freedom speakers,” the association announced last week.
The NRA website’s event page for the forum says “firearms and firearm accessories, knives or weapons of any kind” are banned from the forum before and during Pence’s attendance. Because the vice president will be there, the U.S. Secret Service is in charge of event security, the NRA website says.
Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, shared a screenshot of the weapons ban on Twitter, calling the NRA a “hilarious parody of itself.”
Fred Guttenberg, father of Jaime Guttenberg, who was killed in the Parkland shooting, chimed in: “I thought giving everyone a gun was to enhance safety. Am I […]
Looking hard and failing to find the alleged hypocrisy here, Stephan, when it isn’t the NRA levying this requirement, but the Secret Service as the price of having Spence attend. That’s like saying that someone is a hypocrite on the 2nd Amendment because he or she doesn’t carry his or her otherwise legal concealed weapon into a post office because it is (stupidly) a gun-free zone. Kind of flies in the face of the definition of “hypocrite.”
The hypocrisy of the NRA begins with the promotiion of firearms as a way to make yourself safer when an endless list of studies show is not true (see SR archives), although very profitable. It continues with the good guy with a gun… bumper sticker. Also untrue, and known to be so.
The irony which you don’t see but the 13 readers who wrote me today found very blatant, arises from this, quoted from the story: “Attendees will be allowed to carry firearms in the convention center and in the Omni Dallas Hotel in accordance with state law, the NRA’s website states — but not during the forum Pence will attend.” And yes, as the article states, this is a demand made by the Secret Service. It is still ironical, even though you don’t see that.
— Stephan
No more, ironical, Stephan, than me having to leave my legal concealed carry firearm at home just to go to the post office to mail a letter. The irony is your invention. I have been engaging more deeply lately with the research literature, both pro and con, and the idea that “firearms don’t make you safer” is a simplistic and premature conclusion. Gary Kleck very recently, for example, discovered some unpublished (suppressed?) CDC data that actually confirms his data on the defensive use of firearms for which he had long been criticized. One example of this ill-formed criticism is a seriously-flawed study that (as I recall) you cited favorably, by David Hemenway for the Harvard violence project.Unfortunately, that’s the quality of study that you often base your conclusions on.
By the way, if the NRA is so successful at promoting firearms profits, then why did Remington recently file for Chapter 11 protection? And why are many gun stores going out of business? I know the reasons, and it has nothing to do with the NRA. No more so than any other national-level organization that has promoting a legal industry as part of its mission. You’re essentially vilifying an organization that is supporting an industry employing literally hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Americans (including many who are the NRA’s constituents) offering perfectly legal products.