Latest WTF from the NRA: Why do Obama's kids get armed guards?

I wasn't going to do any more blogging today, but WHAT IN HOLY HELL IS WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE?!?



The Sandy Hook massacre last month ripped apart an already bipolar American gun culture. The President is responding to public demand for tighter gun control, meanwhile advocates of unrestricted civilian access to guns want to turn schools into paramilitary fortresses.

I'm on the gun-control side, but there's no point in me wading into an argument that is already using up tons of bandwidth. Instead, let's look again at just how awful that NRA ad is.

First of all, it's moronic. A couple of years ago, my son attended the same Ottawa public school as our Prime Minister's daughter. The whole time she attended in that capacity, there were armed RCMP guards discreetly positioned at the school. Of course there were. These children, through no fault of their own, are targets for a multitude of crazy, angry, and politically-motivated baddies.

But there's a deeper stench to this ad. As the Daily Beast's David Frum noted:

Generally speaking, a president's family should not be subject to political criticism. That rule was honorably upheld in the case of the Bush daughters, who grew into fine young people, and the rule should be same for the Obama daughters - especially if it's true, as has been widely reported, that this first family has faced a unique degree of threat.

This was grievous enough to warrant an official White House response by spokesman Jay Carney, “Most Americans agree that a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the president's children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”

The US gun "debate" is just getting uglier and uglier.