The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) proposal last week to place armed police offers in schools has many problems, but the Left’s hysterical response to the idea, calling it everything from “offensive” and “insane” to a “dumb-ass idea,” is no more than another hypocritical and ignorant response from a media herd more interested in pushing a political agenda then honestly representing the truth.
Just as the media threw a tantrum after Hurricane Sandy about Mitt Romney’s year-old suggestion that federal disaster response responsibilities be transferred to localities and private industry (despite the overlooked fact that federal disaster response is already largely “privatized“) the media is in overdrive attempting to redefine the NRA’s not-so-new idea into a fringe position.
Largely unreported in the post-NRA press conference coverage is the fact that the federal government has been providing grants for local governments to place armed security in schools for more a decade.
After the school shooting at Columbine High School (which notably occurred five years before the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004), then-President Bill Clinton proposed an additional $60 million in federal grants for the Department of Justice’s already existing “COPS in Schools” program. No one on the left denounced Clinton as “evil” at the time.
The COPS in Schools program continued to fund over $753 million in grants to place new police officers in schools through 2005. Although that program was discontinued during the Bush administration, a similar DOJ program called “Secure Our Schools” continued to provide school security grants until that program was discontinued by the Obama administration in 2012. Technically, President Obama was putting cops in schools long before the NRA proposed the idea.
While some on the Left were correct to criticize the NRA for not taking a more balanced and fiscally realistic approach to addressing school gun violence, the same pundits are intentionally ignoring the fact that the Left’s forced demonization of any proposal that doesn’t ban as many guns as possible is equally close-minded and unrealistic.
Maybe if the NRA had marketed its police-hiring idea as a Keynesian stimulus program instead the Left would be on board.
It’s not a coincidence that the current media narrative revolves around the NRA’s “crazy” idea rather than the history of President Clinton’s COPS in Schools program or the pertinent criticisms of the soon to be reintroduced Assault Weapons Ban legislation (such as the seemingly relevant fact that it was largely ineffective). Many in the media desperately want tougher gun control, and they don’t have any problem pushing their anti-gun, anti-NRA views as non-biased “news.”
Benghazi? Fast & Furious? Most outside of Fox News didn’t think there was anything significant to report. Apparently a speech from the NRA’s Executive Vice-President is much more worthy of media criticism. Pundits and the media love to be outraged, except when the outrage could discredit their particular world view.
