To say that Dave Perry, the editor of the Aurora Sentinel doesn’t like the NRA would be a colossal understatement. He wrote in a recent oped that they are the real terrorists in America, and the “guilty monsters” should be rounded up and shipped to GITMO. He didn’t seem to be kidding, either.
“I now agree that it’s fruitless to give the benefit of the doubt to people who are so obviously corrupt, so clearly malevolent, so bent on hurting innocent people for their own sick gain,” Perry wrote in his April 25 editorial. “No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism.”
“When the facts are so clearly before all Americans, for the whole world to see, why bother with this country’s odious and cumbersome system of justice?” he asked. “Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in their own mental squalor.”
“No, no, no. Not the wannabe sick kid who blew up the Boston marathon or the freak that’s mailing ricin-laced letters to the president,” he explained in case the reader was wrong headed enough to think that perpetrators of actual crimes should be the ones so harshly punished. He continued, “I’m talking about the real terrorist threat here in America: the National Rifle Association.”
You think he’s joking? I’m not sure about that. He wrote that the week after the Senate gun bill went down in flames, and he was lashing out in anger at the group he saw as responsible.
“I’m not laughing. What the NRA did last week was no laughing matter. Aurora is a community that knows only too well the downside of prolific guns, of military weapons in the hands of crazy people, of a nation that’s gone so far off base when it comes to firearm regulations that common sense is beyond our reach,” he fumed.
What really had Perry banging his sippy cup in deranged fury, though, was that not only did the mean ol’ terrorists in the NRA cheat the “90 percent” by “cheating and extorting and misleading”, they celebrated their “successful deceit” when they won.
Anyhoo…
Sentinel commenter, “Peanut Butter” had the perfect response, so I’m posting it in full:
Apparently when the people refuse to accept a law that, by the admission of supporters and detractors alike, would have done nothing to prevent the gun violence that inspired the legislation in the first place, those people designate themselves heartless murderers, gutless sycophantic shills for evil faceless merchants of death, extortionists, cowards, and hypocrites. Apparently it’s “common sense” to respond to tragedy by passing legislation that would have failed entirely to prevent the tragedy. Apparently we are lunatics for believing that criminals who are already prepared to commit capital offenses are unlikely to submit to new laws making their illegal acts still more illegal.
Apparently we as a people are contemptible terrorists for refusing to give up rights peacefully exercised by millions as punishment for evil acts of a few criminally insane murderers. Apparently the NRA wields some inexplicable and magical power over politicians across the nation, despite, we are told, little actual grass roots support. One wonders where they store the presses that print their money, given that the loud mouths in the press fail to recognize any possibility that it comes from Mr. and Mrs. America. Please forgive me if I fail to see the “common sense” in such thinking. You’ll also forgive me, I hope, if I refuse to give up the inalienable right to due process of law in the face of your outrage that I also refuse to give up my inalienable right to provide for my own defense.