NRA chief fights back at criticism over his suggestion to put armed forces in schools

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has rejected the idea of new gun control legislation following the recent Connecticut shooting, insisting that his suggestion to put armed forces in schools in order to ramp up security is not impractical.

The NRA chief appeared on NBC’s "Meet the Press on Sunday" to defend his support for more security in schools.

“If it’s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” LaPierre told NBC’s David Gregory. “I think the American people think it’s crazy not to do it. It’s the one thing that would keep people safe and the NRA is going try to do that.”

He argued that if the US military can spend $2 billion just to train police officers in Iraq then why can’t it spend some money to make its own country free of violence?

When asked about his opinion over laws that will restrain the size of ammunition magazines or clips, LaPierre said that he doesn’t believe it will make any difference.

“There are so many different ways to evade that, even if you had that. You had that for 10 years when (Sen.) Dianne Feinstein passed a ban in 1994. It was on the books. Columbine occurred right in the middle of it – it didn’t make any difference,” he said.

LaPierre again blamed the media for creating hype against guns every time a tragedy related to fire arms takes place, but insisted that if armed guards had been present at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, the incident would not have happened in the first place.

“If I’m a mom or a dad and I’m dropping my child off at school I’d feel a whole lot safer if there were trained armed security guards or police protecting the school from people such as Lanza," LaPierre said, accepting that nothing seems to be enough when it comes to taking prevention measures against crime.

LaPierre also argued that due to the lack of a well functioning mental health system in the country, the rate at which such crimes take place has been on the rise. He said that states need to put the names of such people in a proper record and a system should be worked out that will automatically screen out such individuals to prevent them from buying guns.