Since the NRA's Wayne LaPierre proposed armed security for every school, the left has reacted with the same Alinsky tactics used on Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney -- freeze the target, personalize it, demonize it.

Within minutes of the NRA press conference and its Code Pink interruptions, MSNBC called LaPierre's comments a "train wreck... a dramatic statement about the absurdity of the NRA's increasingly twisted worldview."

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times labeled LaPierre's remarks an "insane parody... a crazed presentation," and her colleague at the Times, Gail Collins, called LaPierre "unhinged."

Not to be outdone in classy rhetoric, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), perennial sponsor of a magazine capacity bill, chimed in with "The extreme rhetoric of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA is disturbing and dangerous..."

Mike Lupica, writing in the New York Daily News, continued on the high road, saying that LaPierre "attacks the mental health system in this country even as he sounds like he needs to be in it."

Lupica repeats what he considers a "terrific" Daily News front page headline calling LaPierre "the craziest man on earth." To which LaPierre has replied "If it's crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy."

With lockdown drills and security cameras already a fact of school life, ask any mom or dad if they would be reassured by a police presence as well.

The school which the president's daughters attend has security guards -- aside from the secret service -- as "standard operating procedure," according to Breitbart, one reason that people with resources choose such a school. But Wayne LaPierre is "crazy" for suggesting the same thing for the rest of us.

Mr. Lupica goes on to posit that the NRA does not represent everyday gun owners but rather the "lunatic fringe," a theme which Lautenberg has also espoused: "The NRA leadership is wildly out of touch with its own members..."
So the NRA stance that we already have 20,000 gun laws and don't need any more is not shared by its members. I suspect that would be news to many NRA members, especially in light of comments such as these in The Nation:

Advocates must pressure members to pass legislation swiftly reinstating the assault weapons ban and outlawing high-capacity magazines. The language of those bills must be strong...

But that's only a start... Handguns, particularly in urban areas, claim thousands of lives every year, and let's be frank: there's no political will to ban or confiscate those weapons.

... which means that gun control advocates should broaden the fight. They can target the profiteers of gun violence...

There's also bullet control... The guns owned in America might always be with us, but they need a steady supply of bullets to be dangerous.

And constitutional scholars have proposed enacting gun control through the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments instead of the Second Amendment, on the theory that the later amendments allow for a more democratic consideration of the way guns are affecting the country.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner thinks, however, that both Harry Reid and Barack Obama have signaled their hesitance to jam through new anti-gun legislation right now:

The president's decision to appoint a blue-ribbon panel -- the classic Washington ploy to defuse and delay consideration of an issue -- along with Reid's inaction on the gun question will undoubtedly frustrate many in their party who want immediate action.

Daniel Foster, writing for National Review, has it about right:

Liberals everywhere seem to think they've finally found the unwastable crisis in the gun-control debate.