The National Rifle Association gave their first press conference following the Newtown massacre on Friday, during which Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre offered a number of solutions to prevent mass shootings, such as having armed guards in every school, as well as criticisms ranging from the culture of violence-as-entertainment and the media’s demonization of guns in general (transcript here):

As brave and heroic and as self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms and as prompt and professional and well- trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own, unable to stop it.

As parents we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It’s now time for us to assume responsibility for our schools. The only way — the only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. …

I call on Congress today, to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. And, to do it now to make sure that blanket safety is in place when our kids return to school in January. …

Every school is gonna have a different solution based on its own unique situation. Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place, though, right now.

And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years — we have 11,000 police training instructors in the NRA — is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help. …

If we truly cherish our kids, more than our money, more than our celebrities, more than our sports stadiums, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible. And that security is only available with properly trained, armed good guys. Under Asa’s leadership, our team of security experts will make this program available to the world for protecting our children in school. And we’ll make the program available to every single school in America, free of charge. That’s a plan of action that can, and will make a real positive, indisputable difference in the safety of our children, and it will start right now.

I don’t know about having an armed public servant stationed in every school; that is an assuredly expensive endeavor that is better left to federalism, although the NRA was likely going for some popular appeal with that suggestion and a few others. But, I am completely on board with the sentiment that this immediate reaction against all types of guns is ridiculous, and the very idea of merely declaring schools to be “gun-free zones” as the best method of protecting our children is utter folly (full blogger’s disclosure: I am an NRA member). Whether it’s with “assault” weapons or semiautomatics or what have you, a determined murderer is rarely-to-never going to be stopped by people who are themselves unarmed. We can do better than merely calling for more demonstrably failed gun-control measures as the only way of enhancing public safety and security, and every other pro-gun idea is categorically and irrevocably declared out of the question.

Of course, there was probably nothing the NRA could say that was ever going to play over well with the media and progressives regardless of the content — and predictably, nothing really did (although, funnily enough, LaPierre talked up some of the ideas that Congressional Democrats have already proposed in Newtown’s wake without a major media backlash… hmmm…).