Milbank: NRA chief reaps what he sows

Ultimately, the financially stressed NRA didn’t buy LaPierre the mansion. That’s too bad, because, as the saying goes: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a French chateau.”

LaPierre and his wife wanted the 10,000-square-foot estate, set on a lake and built with white oak floors, “French Beaumanier limestone” (whatever that is) and “exquisite custom handcrafted wood trim” — rather than an upscale high-rise in Dallas. I am sympathetic to his thinking, because although guns don’t kill people, insufficiently fortified upscale high-rises most certainly do.

Further, the LaPierres sought to acquire a social membership at the community’s exclusive golf club; they wanted the seller’s cars and golf cart to convey; and Susan LaPierre was concerned that there was not enough space in her husband’s would-be closet. This sounds a bit precious, but consider: The golf cart almost certainly would have been up-armored after closing. And though LaPierre typically wears Italian suits purchased for him by the NRA, he needs someplace to store all that bulky body armor.

“They were just trying to find a safe house to put him in,” LeRoy Sisco, an NRA board member, told the Washington Post. “They were just saying that they needed to get him to a safe place.”

Some will see hypocrisy in LaPierre trying to get the NRA to buy him a mansion in a gated community when the NRA, at the time of the attempted acquisition, issued a statement decrying the anti-gun “elites” who “live in gated communities.” Many will see it as ironic that LaPierre feels unsafe because of the very gun culture his policies have created.

But it’s good to know he apparently feels some of what most Americans feel: that gun violence is out of control.

There have been more than 250 mass shootings in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, but the recent back-to-back mass killings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, have people on edge.

Frightful false alarms

Active-shooter false alarms have caused pandemonium and injuries across the country. In New York’s Times Square, motorcycle backfire caused panic and a stampede, as people screamed, cried and climbed on each other.

My 15-year-old daughter was caught up in one such panic in June. At the Capital Pride Parade in D.C., a man with a BB gun set off a stampede of hundreds of people, and falling metal barriers may have convinced others that shots had been fired. Several were injured. My daughter, separated from her group, sheltered in a hotel basement until police gave the all-clear.

She has been skittish about being in crowds since then, and understandably so. Since El Paso and Dayton, and Gilroy, and Virginia Beach and Pittsburgh, millions don’t feel safe shopping, attending festivals, going to school or houses of worship, walking the streets or going out at night. This is directly because of the madness LaPierre’s NRA has inflicted on America.

Now he knows what it feels like.