So we have to put up with lamebrain private yahoos depriving us of our rights too?
by digby
When I wrote my piece this morning about gun proliferation activists intimidating people and making them unwilling to exercise their first amendment rights, I hadn't seen this:
The National Rifle Association’s security guards gained notoriety earlier this year when, escorting NRA officials to a hearing, they were upbraided by Capitol authorities for pushing cameramen. The thugs were back Tuesday when the NRA rolled out its “National School Shield” — the gun lobbyists’ plan to get armed guards in public schools — and this time they were packing heat.
About 20 of them — roughly one for every three reporters — fanned out through the National Press Club, some in uniforms with gun holsters exposed, others with earpieces and bulges under their suit jackets.
In a spectacle that officials at the National Press Club said they had never seen before, the NRA gunmen directed some photographers not to take pictures, ordered reporters out of the lobby when NRA officials passed and inspected reporters’ briefcases before granting them access to the news conference.
The antics gave new meaning to the notion of disarming your critics.
By journalistic custom and D.C. law, of course, reporters don’t carry guns to news conferences — and certainly not when the person at the lectern is the NRA’s Asa Hutchinson, an unremarkable former congressman and Bush administration official whom most reporters couldn’t pick out of a lineup. But the NRA wasn’t going to leave any doubt about its superior firepower.
Free speech isn't much of a "right" when people people who disagree with me are ostentatiously carrying a loaded gun. It's bad enough that we are often deprived of our rights by the state's authorities. Now we're going to be deprived of them by yahoos who like to march around in uniforms and play soldier too?
This is, frankly, closer to revolutionary Che worship than all-American patriotism. But I'm going to guess these bozos don't have a clue.
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