Mayor blasts NRA call for armed school guards

New York officials quickly condemned the National Rifle Association's proposal to put armed guards in all schools in response to the massacre in Newtown, Conn. Mayor Michael Bloomberg as well as City Comptroller John Liu wasted no time in speaking out against the NRA's proposal. "I call on Congress to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police in every school," said NRA president Wayne LaPierre at a long-awaited press conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday. What's more, he said that the NRA has thousands of instructors ready to offer their expertise on how best to protect schools and children with armed force. Mr. LaPierre insisted that strengthening gun control by implementing new restrictions would not prevent mass shootings. "We need to deploy a protection program with armed security," he said. Mr. Bloomberg, who six years ago founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said that Mr. LaPierre's proposal is even out of line with the desires of many of the NRA's own members, who he insisted support gun-buying restrictions like background checks. "Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America," said Mr. Bloomberg in a statement. "While they promote armed guards, they continue to oppose the most basic and common sense steps we can take to save lives—not only in schools, but in our movie theaters, malls, and streets." Mr. Liu also minced no words in commenting on the NRA plan. "The NRA's grotesque proposal insults the memory of the innocent victims who were gunned down in Newtown, Conn.," he said in a statement. "The gun lobby's argument that our children would only be protected if schools had armed guards is a twisted version of a future in which no one is safe." There are currently 99,000 public schools and 33,000 private schools in the country, according to data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics. The NRA is in the process of developing a model, called the National School Safety Shield program, to further implement Mr. LaPierre's idea. The organization did not accept questions following the news conference. Earlier this week, a group of New York Democrat lawmakers introduced a package of bills designed to close the loopholes in the state's assault weapons ban. Much of the proposed legislation is already in place in New York City, which has famously strict gun laws.