The What It Means trope is a favorite of lefties. It implies the audience is incapable of comprehension and conclusions - which lefties are happy to provide without all that thoughtful reflection nonsense.

just another inane article about the politics of gun control instead of a real article on how we actually protect our kids in school.

3 cheers for the response of the NRA. At least they came up with a plan of action that will make our children safe.

Good for him. I suggested the very same thing here the other day, as far as armed security guards in our schools, with signs stating so.

More armed citizens, etc. means less mass shootings. Why is this so difficult for libs to understand?

It is crazy people who are killing others. That´s the first thing that needs to be dealt with. Lock ´em up! Then deal with the glorification of violence in our culture.

What makes the author think I need his column to TELL me what Mr. LaPierre meant?
Defiant? No! Confident perhaps because the Constitution backs him up.

When I go to the county courthouse, there are armed guards. Are our children less important than the lawyers?

May 18, 1927 : In the deadliest mass school murder in United States history, former school board member Andrew Kehoe set off three bombs in Bath Township, Michigan killing 45 people and wounding 58. Kehoe killed himself and the superintendent by blowing up his own vehicle

I utterly refuse to ´register´ onthe WaPo (or nay other) website just to confront idiots. But may I suggest that EVERY time some fool bleats "No one needs an AR-15 to (fill in the blank..." )that EVERYONE respond "No One Needs A (Porsche, Corvette, Ferrarri...pick one)either! Why, a Porsche can go 180 miles an hour! No one needs to go 180 miles an hour- no one should be permitted to own a Porsche!!" Then watch the looks you get.

The NRA is all about protecting the rights of law abiding Americans to own firearms. To do that they must both defend, support and oppose all sorts of political action. I have never heard the NRA advocate that crazy people should have legal access to firearms.

Now is not the time for the NRA to make any specific recommendations on what kind of gun control that should be passed or not passed through Congress. When the VP Biden´s task force and the subsequent gun control bills are introduced in the Congress and it is clear just what the gun control advocates are proposing, then it will be time for the NRA to say it´s piece and possibly make recommendations.

You have to admit that if the mentally ill person in Connecticut knew that instead of facing "a gun free zone" when he forced his way into the school, that he would be confronted by an armed and trained police officer that he probably never would have gone there, as evidenced by the fact that as soon as he heard the first responser´s sirens, and knew that they were coming for him, that he immediately took his own life thus completing his suicide mission.

What it means? I´ll tell you what it means. Americans have an organization to look to for the defense of our Second Amendment right to own firearms. The NRA will not go gently into the night of collectivist tyranny, nor will they condemn the rest of us to that fate without a fight.

Now I have one for Mr. Cillizza:

Since the Sandy Hook shootings, the NRA has received 8,000 NEW members each DAY. You tell me what THAT means.

The NRA has no reason to apologize, so the headline itself is stupid.

What it all means, Chris, is that the NRA is not folding in the face of the emotionalist false propaganda of the Democrats and their thralls. It means they´re going to continue to do their job.

Someone pointed out the brilliance of the NRA waiting a week before making a statement. Making any statement in the aftermath is to wade in without information and fighting through a web of emotional response. Now that we know more, he can point out the lack of effect the gun laws had as well as the sheer incitement of shooting rampages at Gun Free Zones where people will be defenseless.

Look for more hysterical responses, because they do not want to hear logic.

"No one NEEDS a 3000 square foot ´McMansion´! McMansions are ostentatious and wasteful of energy and natural resources. No one NEEDS 3000 square feet of living space when they could shelter their family perfectly adequately in a one-room apartment. NO ONE should be allowed to own McMansions!"

Congress needs to investigate why so many people are buying guns and joining the NRA. I know it will never happen, they might find out what Americans really thing about gun control. Chicago has strict gun control and the streets are a war zone. The only thing missing is IEDs, whoops, probably giving some of the wackos an idea.

What a stupid premise. Apologize - for what!!?? Let´s hear the WaPo apologize for helping straddle the country with a nitwit for a president. Should the news networks just block out every time 24x7 to have the Festivus airing of grievances? Anheiser-Busch for every drunken car wreck or drunken episode; tobacco companies for every tobacco-related illness; car companies for every wreck. These people are certifiably insane. "what it means" is that libtards are libtards and wouldn´t know a thing about personal liability if it bit them.

The NRA and its members support a civil right codified in the Constitution. They do NOT recommend mass murder of school children. For WHAT do the idiots at the Washington Post think the NRA should apologize.

This over the top hysteria by the media and outright hatred of anyone who supports gun ownership as our Constitutional right needs to be stopped. They are trying to beat us down and create another politically correct rule of society that requires that we be ostracized. We cannot allow this to happen. This has nothing to do with criminals and whacos with guns. This has everything to do with Obama´s and the liberals desire to take the right of gun ownership away from law abiding Americans. Try it.

What I heard in that speech from LaPierre was: if Biden/Obama want to take our guns away, they will have to try to do it without any advisement or input from the NRA. Makes sense to me! He really told it as he saw it, no pussy-footing around. If you heard/saw the speech, you will have no need for a pundit to tell you "what it means." Wayne LaPierre told us directly, straight up.

The left doesn´t seem to care about our declining culture, but decry normal people wanting to protect themselves from the growing number of irresponsible people.

The idiots in the chicago ghettos lack the smarts to rig an IED. The comments at the end of the article show me that we are truly a house divided against itself. The libs hate guns and since they don´t want guns, you should not own them either. The libs want a totalitarian government, so why would they ever contemplate defending themselves against the government?

I am afraid the cop-in-every-school proposal will only encourage gun control zealots. It is a fantastic, impractical, un-affordable, and unworkable scheme. It is laughable. The NRA president has played right into the hands of the gun control lobby. He sounds like a nut case - which is exactly what the anti-gun Left wants everyone to think of anyone who owns a firearm, especially -gasp!- an "assault rifle."

Memo to NRA: Please obtain the services of a good public relations firm ASAP. And take their advice.

"Unapologetic NRA"???

What would they have to apologize for exactly?

Do you expect automobile companies to be "apologetic" for all the traffic fatalities?

I read on the internet that 446 school age children have been killed with guns in Chicago this year........so far.......!! Where is the outrage, who is holding the "mayor´s" feet to the fire to do something. I guess a group of children getting killed at the same time, counts more than one or two at a time. Like airplane crashes kill lots of people, car wrecks, not so many.

For a couple of minutes there I had some doubts about Mr. LaPierre. They´re all gone now.

How about a mea culpa from the liberal left that beginning in the 1970’s emptied out the asylums and made it nearly impossible to commit certifiable nuts for treatment?

Couldn´t get past the lede.
Cillizza is hopeless, absolutely hopeless.

PLease don´t tell me this assclown gets paid to write tripe like this.

let the libs be confronted by a bad guy & what do they look for?.... a good guy w/a gun!... as said before, nothing stops a bad guy w/a gun like a good guy w/a gun... amen

Nonsense #20. He was speaking to the low information voters, who think the Federal government has all the money in the world!

The corrupt media is on wrong side of justice....I heard a good plan from NRA and I will now join up with the NRA to save this country...

Any sane citizen should bloody well be defiant when confronted with a government and a media that wants to take away his/her rights. Defiance is exactly why the founders gave us those rights in the first place.

#20 would do well to “teleo” less, and “endo” more logicus. To stipulate that it would be impossible to find enough qualified individuals in America to provide an armed presence at each of her public public school in the country is absurd. Sometimes, when the issue of guns comes up, even normally rational people lose focus.

There is not a thing for the NRA to be apologetic for! It is a class organization the projects gun safety, first and foremost. And I don´t think that you will find any NRA membership cards on any of these characters that have committed these atrocities...so quit the misinformation and out right lies to project your liberal regressive hidden (most of the time) agenda. These incidents are tragic, however the knee jerk, mob rule, Salem style witch hunts will miss the mark every time. And look at the statistics, which mobs overlook, that is in places where there are strict to almost total gun control is in place there are higher violence rates...there is a reason for this: An armed populous is a polite, more respectful society. Take it for what it is worth, and look at all these issues through the lens of logical and common sense (which is lacking in great numbers in our nation at this point)!

How quickly the liberals and politicians ´forget´ that the principle reason our founding fathers included specifically the right to keep and bear arms was because of the threat from politicians, governments and tyrannical individuals attempting to subjugate a free people...look at the dictatorships in this world, do their people have the right to defend themselves???

I saw part of the press conference on TV ... good for the NRA and Wayne LaPierre!

#31 -

In his politically disastrous speech, LaPierre conceded the claim by the gun control lobby that American children are in such imminent peril that something sweeping has to be done at once. Once grant this -which of course I do not, since the data do not remotely support such a fantastically exaggerated claim- and more gun control makes sense. Indeed, it would be morally and socially obligatory to restrict firearms if the situation were as bad as that. The situation is nowhere near as bad as that. LaPierre has bought into the hysteria. I notice that he proposed "a national database of the mentally ill," whatever that means. Whatever it means, it could not have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre.

This entire business is generating more heat than light. The last thing conservatives need to do is to get on board the Panic & Hysteria Express with its imperative to do something, anything, NOW!

Just once, I´d like to see the liberal bedwetters get as outraged at al Qaeda and Muslim nutjobs like Maj. Hasan, who carry out these massacres on a regular basis all over the world, as they do at the NRA and its members, who never have.

They are beginning to bore me.

Every sane person knows that appeasement is a formula for defeat. A noteworthy characteristic of appeasement is that the inevitable defeat that ensues from following that policy is always met with a demand for more and better appeasement, rather than a logical and dispassionate search for an understanding of what has happened.

Thus, when a utopian and useless demand for "gun-free zones" results in such areas attracting cowards with evil intentions, the logic of looking at how to actually stop the "fish in a barrel" outcome is buried under the usual hand-wringing over-emotionalism that empowers the left and substitutes for rational thought and adult responsibility.

The left is saying: to hell with our children. Let them be sacrificed on the Godless altar of appeasement.

If armed guards in schools wouldn´t keep kids safe, why do Air Marshals on planes carry guns?

At the Sandy Hook tragedy, everyone had to wait until people came with guns. Only then Lanza took his life. If the teachers had guns they wouldn´t have had to wait. Just think of the lives that would have been saved. All these massacres are contingent upon someone coming precious minutes later with guns. This can be stopped at the first minutes. And it may even act as an deterrent. The only difference between police having guns and trained teachers is valuable time.

"Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est."
(A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer´s hands.) Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD

#36 has it correct. The NRA had an opportunity to make a coherent recommendation that would preserve 100% of the rights for law-abiding citizens and yet make it more difficult for delusional people with serious mental illness to lay their hands on guns. The NRA chose not to do so and instead, stomp its feet and say no, no, no!

As a public relations tool, that is a disaster. As public policy, it is foolish. The NRA knew there were already many in this country who supported all-out gun control. This grandstanding only makes their argument stronger. And the many who want to see restrictions only on those who are seriously mentally ill have no place to turn...in the NRA.

Supporting the NRA position now means supporting gun rights for delusional, psychotic people who may hear voices telling them to get a gun and run rampant. That isn´t going to fly with most people...and it will end up costing freedoms that could have been saved.

I would not expect a rational response from the left on this, even if they read and understood every word of the NRA President´s address. That said, I still recommend actually reading the words put forth by LaPierre. For some of us they make a lot of sense.

Apologize for what; Shooting gallery gun-free zones; psychotics that are virtually impossible to commit; restrictive gun laws that made the odds of a rescuer showing up statistically insignificant?

Blow it out your ignorant backside, Cillizza...

I wasn´t aware that "promoting mental health" was the NRA´s job, or, e.g., Smith & Wesson´s, Kimber´s, Glock´s or Sturm Ruger´s. On the other hand, since the so-called "mental health professionals" and their ACLU andacademic enablers are doing such a p-poor job of it, maybe it should be.

My view on his presser is this. He doesn´t get into a gun/no gun argument to avoid stirring the gun control crowd. He rather rationally points out the hypocrisy of not treating and protecting our children as a valuable resource, like our money, govt. officials, etc. If government decides its so important to provide armed protection for all these others, why aren´t the government run schools justified the same protection. I think he fully realizes that this won´t happen but it deflects the argument away from the anti-gun ninnies and directs the question properly to how do we protect our children in schools.

That discourse requires more than the knee jerk reaction that the media and anti-2nd Amendment folks trot out.

Most communities that give half a fig about their schools could probably provide enough volunteers to make it happen.

314 million citizens, many of them gun owners and this is the best we can do as far as using the media? There must be hundreds of articulate women out there that could have done a better job. Instead of allowing those 2 protestors to show their signs and rant, he should have stopped the press conference and unloaded on them. How DARE they accuse legal gun owners of killing children? He should have asked them, ´where were you when we tried for YEARS to get cities to enforce Project Exile? Where were you when we went into schools and taught Eddie the Eagle gun safety rules to children to counter the mindless gun violence in the media?

The creepy reporters in that room want store clerks, women and the rest of us to be defenseless. Live on a farm out of sight of a highway, you don´t need an AR rifle. On and on it goes.

Since none of the perpetrators of the mass shootings were NRA members, what is the NRA supposed to apologize for anyway?

Just bought a Sig Sauer pistol and an application for NRA membership was in the box.

Haven´t gotten my first magazine yet.

Wonder what the wife will think.

#49, convince her to go with you to a range. If she is opposed to firearms, explain she should have at least one experience with her in control, so she will have some idea what she is talking about if the subject comes up. I´m guessing there is an excellent chance that if she is properly instructed and goes through a box or two of ammo, she will not only catch on real quick, but enjoy shooting a tighter group than you. Plus she will meet a new bunch of polite, interesting, friends. We need more responsible women trained with and advocates for, firearms.

#49, when I inherited my Dad´s S&W Model 10 .38 a few years back, my first gun, my instructor carried a Glock 23. I liked it and bought a G22 .40, the full-size version. My wife asked why we needed two guns in the house, so I took her to the range. She is now the proud owner of a G19 9mm, and shoots better than I do. She was a public school teacher, and given the opportunity would have done everything she could to drop that little POS in CT.

Try it, you may be pleasantly surprised.