Lies and hypocrisy reach record levels
The National Rifle Association today held a press conference to cover its apparently cowardly hide in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, which media pundits have already gleefully pinned the blame for on violent videogames.
Naturally, the NRA has done the same — claiming guns don’t kill people, videogames with guns in them do.
“And 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,” claimed the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre in his statement. “Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse.
“And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?”
He would also go on to attack such recently released films as American Psycho and Natural Born Killers, as well as music videos that, “portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life.”
“But is that what it really is,” he continued. “Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?
“In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another 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 — every minute of every day of every month of every year.”
In this statement, the National Rifle Association has successfully exposed itself as the craven, spineless organization it really is. Unable to simply defend his group on its own merit, LaPierre instead tried to deflect blame, passing the buck onto a safe and easily identifiable target in the pathetic hope that people would stop paying attention to guns.
And what’s he fucking going on about, claiming the media has tried to “conceal” violence in entertainment? Within moments of the Sandy Hook news breaking, we had mainstream media falling over itself to criticize videogames. LaPierre knows this, and at once hopes to exploit the media’s scapegoating of modern entertainment while claiming he’s the only man brave enough to scapegoat modern entertainment. A liar, a hypocrite, and a fucking invertebrate. What a lovely combo.
Also, good job reaching for a 10-year-old flash game that nobody’s ever heard of in order to try and make a point. Free advertising for an incredibly obscure game, plus a nice public indicator of how desperate you are to find some sort of vague connection between games and Sandy Hook. Mind you, that was undermined the moment you brought up a 20-year-old fighting game that doesn’t have guns in it.
Whether you agree with gun control or not, the malingering attempts to drag videogames into the debate is intellectually offensive. Here we have a group that claims to stand for the constitution, while attacking one of America’s most envied rights — the right to free expression. The two-faced pusillanimity of these lily-livered poltroons ranks highly among the most nauseating examples of accountability deflection I’ve ever witnessed in my career — and I’ve seen most of them.
Feel free to read the whole thing, in which one proposed solution to gun violence in schools is to put more guns in schools. In any case, I’d like to thank the NRA for eradicating whatever shreds of sympathy I might have ever had for its cause.
Fuck you very much.
[Image source: woodleywonderworks]
