The NRA called for a surge of gun-carrying "good guys" around U.S. schools Friday in the group's first public statement since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for a new kind of American domestic security revolving around armed civilians, arguing that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
A gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conneticut on Dec. 14. Twenty of the victims were children. The shooting has ignited a debate over gun control. Vice President Joe Biden will lead the Obama administrations efforts on the issue, CNN reported.
The NRA, however, argued that more guns, not less, is the answer to mass shootings.
"We care about our president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents," LaPierre said. "Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by Capitol Police officers. Yet, when it comes to our most beloved, innocent, and vulnerable members of the American family, our children, we as a society leave them every day utterly defenseless, and the monsters and the predators of the world know it, and exploit it."
LaPierre also took issue with the idea that guns were to blame for gun violence. LaPierre instead said that violent video games, music videos and "blood-soaked" films influenced people's actions.
"But what if – what if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he’d been confronted by qualified armed security? Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 little kids, that 26 innocent lives might have been spared that day?" LaPierre said.
Video of LaPierre's statement is attached to this poll.
In some of the most bloody school shootings, it is unlikely an armed guard would have made a difference.
During Columbine in 1999 a Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy fired at Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold within minutes of the incident beginning. Despite this, Harris and Klebold were able to continue their attack, going to the library where most of their victims were killed.
Before Columbine in 1998, 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden shot and killed four elementary students and one teacher and injured 10 others, a History Channel report stated. In that instance the boys pulled a fire alarm and waited at a distance for people to exit the building. Johnson and Golden had taken 13 firearms, including three semi-automatic rifles from relatives.
One of the most infamous school shootings remains Charles Whitman's shooting spree at the University of Texas in 1966. Whitman barricaded himself in the top of the 307 foot high tower and shot at people for an hour and a half. Whitman killed 16 and wounded 31, the American-Statesman reported. Some of Whitman's victims were more than 500 yards away when shot.