It’s incredible. You are incredulous.
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That none of them are good guys?
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Yeah, what’s frustrating about this is that it’s like they are trying to turn around and point to how reasonable it is to have security experts like the secret service run security when the Vice President is there. Yeah, no one disagrees with that.
To borrow from Penn Gillette, hypocrisy doubles your chances of being half right.
To be clear to the NRA - No one thinks you should insist on allowing guns in a convention center with the Vice President (well, not no one but almost everyone who thinks that is one of your members). It’s great that when the VP comes to your convention you follow all appropriate security procedures and listen to experts.
But maybe you could find one of those secret service agents on lunch break and ask them if they think that giving teachers (not secret service agents) guns will make schools a safer place. Or, just generally, if more guns makes a place more safe.
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I’m pretty sure the NRA won’t host their annual meeting in a convention center that doesn’t allow firearms.
From: https://www.nraam.org/attend/firearms-policy/
The RNC, on the other hand, completely ignored this political driving trollies master class of a petition:
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He doesn’t need to - he outsourced a lot of their functions to his private security guy already. (He’s not crazy about the Secret Service in general, especially once he found out that they’re beholden to the law over the president; he can’t appoint anyone to make that not be the case, so why bother.)
Honestly, I think they already know the answer to that. But it’s not really about making anything safer, it’s about giving gun owners the illusion of power and being in control, in order to help them deal with their insecurity over the fact that things aren’t safe.
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Not just the NRA, and not just the secret service. If you go to a normal gun show, at least around here, you can bring weapons, but not loaded weapons or ammunition, even if you’re licensed to carry one, and nobody sells ammo.
Personally, I think the “no loaded weapons” rule is eminently sensible, but it does highlight the hypocrisy of their attitude towards gun free zones.
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I’m worried that we are going to be pointing out massive conservative and Republican hypocrisy right on through a 2020 Trump re-election. It doesn’t seem to faze them.
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Oh, right. How could I forget?
Entertaining scenarios present themselves, though. If Pence is still reliant on the Secret Service, could it become a point of contention between him and Trump? Imagine if his trust in his security diminishes to the point where he feels that his personal safety becomes more important than staying in office. But that is probably too much to hope for.
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So they ban ammunition?
What is the point of walking around with guns if you can’t shoot them?
At this point they are just accessorizing.
[looks at self in mirror]
“Hmmm… I don’t know, what goes better with this outfit, a shoulder strapped AR-15 or the Glock in a holster?
I’m going to be walking a lot so maybe the Glock, I can always just sling it over my shoulder if I want to.”
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Is this a parody article?
Obviously, any place secured by the Secret Service is going to have lots of guns present. Armed agents will be shadowing Pence, others will be in plain clothes in the crowd, snipers will be watching from above. Probably a reaction team with machine guns will be just out of sight.
There is a logical disconnect here.
Most of the guns people bring, they bring to sell or trade, and carry in a case, but yes, some of them do like to wear their guns, so they can pull them out like macho men and chat with the vendors about them, and yes, that is just accessorizing. That’s also why the rule against having them loaded is there, or you’d have accidental shootings on a regular basis.
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Hence the reason why more guns is never a solution. If they acknowledge that loaded guns are dangerous, then the idea that more loaded guns in a place will make it safer is preposterous.
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Though you can’t bring a camera, I’ve discovered. Too dangerous, apparently.
Sadly.
Also, Trump still must rely on the Secret Service, at least to some degree - I’m not sure anyone else is allowed to have a gun in the White House, for instance, so he’s more heavily reliant on them there. (Which may be part of why Trump spends so much time outside it.) Trump still apparently doesn’t have enough interactions with them to actually recognize them, though - there was some video of Trump leaving the White House, a Secret Service agent starts to intercept him and raises his arm to indicate the direction Trump is supposed to go, but Trump instead moves towards him, thinking the guy is someone important whose hand he’s supposed to shake. (He then gets close enough that the agent can explain to him what’s going on, just before he actually shakes his hand.)
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If more politicians were subjected to more “real world problems”, then things would probably be different in a lot of areas.
Though statistically, children are very, very unlikely to be harmed at school by guns or anything else.
Except it isn’t even Pence’s call even. It’s the Secret Service who is in charge of security and they won’t allow the people they protect to put themselves in harms way by disregarding their standard security measures.
I love how the NRA is both “not willing to compromise” and when they do they are being “hypocritical”. 
Can’t win.
I get it - “NRA bad”! But this isn’t really a gotcha moment.
ETA - Also, how is having armed protection from the secret service hypocritical? The point of armed teachers or security in school is having trained protection. That is what is being provided by the Secret Service.
Um… to sell and trade them? The POINT of a gun show. o_0
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That’s exactly what hypocrisy is. They insist on zero action when it comes to trying to save the lives of children but their principles are completely flexible when it’s having the speaker they want at their own convention.
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Hang on…I thought it was the NRA’s official stance that good guys with guns are the opposite of a threat. How can Pence be in “harms way”? By this logic, an NRA convention should be the safest place on earth.
So what you’re saying is the Secret Service does think being surrounded by thousands of gun-toting NRA members is a security risk?
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Of course, if they allowed guns in the convention, it’d be about 20 seconds before a massacre broke out because someone accidentally discharged their weapon, or dropped a firecracker, or sneezed.
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That is disingenuous. Personally I don’t think their suggested action is really necessary nor pragmatically possible. But it is NOT zero action.
Nor are they “compromising principles”. Unlike the monster dreamed up in some peoples heads, there are thousands of places guns aren’t allowed that the NRA isn’t pushing for more access. Things like - court houses, or other government buildings. Of course the difference between those places and schools is they actually take measures to makes sure those areas are “gun free” (And they aren’t actually “gun free” because they have armed security.")
They brought their own good guys with guns. You have one of the most special animals in the nation visiting - there are going to be special rules.
Anyway - see above. Hypocrisy would be a “gun free zone” with no armed security and no measures to make sure the building is actually “gun free”.
The whole “good guys with guns” I don’t think is a great stance, but there IS some truth to it. When a place has true security, is that security armed with guns, or just wits and good looks?
