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Rolling Stone

The flip flops of NRA chief Wayne LaPierre

In the aftermath of the massacre at Newtown, Connecticut, Wayne LaPierre, chief of National Rifle Association, infamously contradicted what he had brazenly stated after the Columbine killings of 1999. Whereas he had then advocated gun-free schools, he now recommended that armed guards be placed outside each school at a time when the country is trying to eliminate the mention of arms from its educational institutions. Tim Dickins says of the disconnect between the two statements, "The shift in LaPierre's rhetoric underscores a radical transformation within the NRA. Billing itself as the nation's "oldest civil rights organisation," NRA still claims to represent the interests of responsible gun owners. But over the past decade and a half, NRA has morphed into a front group for the firearms industry, whose profits are increasingly dependent on the sale of military-bred weapons like the assault rifles used in the massacres at Newtown and Aurora."

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