WTF is this - Disarming your critics - THE NRA takes over the Press Club

[malaise]

http://www.southernminn.com/owatonna_peoples_press/opinion/guest_columns/article_5ed6490c-5442-51b9-a0ff-6e28eac98444.html
<snip>
The gun-lobby goons were at it again.

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.

Thus has it gone so far in the gun debate in Washington. The legislation is about to be taken up in Congress, but by most accounts the NRA has already won. Plans for limiting assault weapons and ammunition clips are history, and the prospects for meaningful background checks are bleak. Now, The Post’s Philip Rucker and Ed O’Keefe report, the NRA is proposing language to gut the last meaningful gun-control proposal, making gun trafficking a federal crime. Apparently, the gun lobby thinks even criminals deserve Second Amendment protection.

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Tweety is discussing this now

[babylonsister]

1. Matthews is pissed, as he should be.

So I guess it's not the day to bash Obama over guns, like yesterday was.

[malaise]

3. If the National Press Club did not have so many hacks

They would have cancelled that Press Conference yesterday.

[Skittles]

2. just more proof of their paranoia and delusion

fuck them all

[malaise]

5. I disagree

The National Press Club deferred to the goons - they should have had them arrested.
Why would a journalist open a brief case for these goons.

[Berlum]

4. Fear is what lives in the souls of these assclowns (R)

[malaise]

7. It is working -Texas prosecutor withdraws from Aryan Brotherhood case

http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-prosecutor-withdraws-white-supremacists-case-killings/story?id=18871841#.UVycrlfwW24
<snip>
An assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting a gang of white supremacists for racketeering and murder in Texas has withdrawn from the case citing "security purposes," just days after the second of two state prosecutors was killed in his home.

The assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case Jay Hileman filed a notice to withdraw from the case with the court, and on Tuesday sent an email about his decision to the defense lawyers representing 34 indicted members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas .

Another source familiar with the message told ABC News it is "abundantly clear" Hileman is stepping down because of security concerns.

Thirty-four Aryan Brotherhood of Texas members were indicted in Houston in November for crimes including racketeering, drug distribution and kidnapping. Ten members potentially faced the death penalty as prosecutors accused them of ruthless violence, including ordering hits on rival gang members.

[Scuba]

6. One of these journalists ask Asa Hutchinson about all the security ...

Hutchinson, pressed by reporters about the armed goons, said: “You go into a mall, there is security. And so there is security here at the National Press Club.”

A reporter asked Hutchinson what he was afraid of.

“There’s nothing I’m afraid of. I’m very wide open,” Hutchinson replied, separated from his unarmed questioners by an eight-foot buffer zone, a lectern, a raised podium, a red-velvet rope and a score of gun-toting men. “There’s nothing I’m nervous about.”

[malaise]

8. The National Press Club should not have allowed this n/t

[Scuba]

9. Agree.

[patrice]

10. "Constitutionally" "protected" fascists. nt

[global1]

11. What Happens At National NRA Meetings With Respect To Security?......

If this is the show of power at the Press Club - which is just a couple of blocks away from the White House - what do they do by way of security at a national NRA meeting? They are for conceal and carry and good guys should have guns cause that's the only way to take out the bad guys - how do they treat their own NRA members at the national meeting? Do they make them check their guns at the door? Isn't any kind of show of concern for security at an NRA meeting - hypocritical? I mean - shouldn't all NRA members have the right to carry a gun into a national NRA meeting?

Has anyone here ever been to an NRA meeting? What happens?

[malaise]

12. Good questions

I hope someone who knows responds

[russspeakeasy]

13. The national press club is not a club. It is a gathering of

weak observers.