Oh my, the clueless gun nuts at the NRA are pissed because the children of the President of the United States get to be protected by armed Secret Service agent while the President doesn't want to extend the same protection to every other child in America, ...or something like that.
Sadly, people like gun nuts are evidently incapable of making any distinction between the President of the United States - and his family - and themselves. If the President's family is protected by armed guards then every man and his family should be protected by armed guards, right? And every man and his family in America should get an Air Force One and get to live in a large house like the White House, with butlers and cooks, etc.
The bottom line, whiners, is that Obama's kids are potential targets for anyone who wants to harm the President and, by extension, the United States. YOUR kids (and mine) aren't political targets.
It might also be useful to contrast the mission of the Secret Service to the perceived "mission" of the gun nuts.
Kay, in a comment on Balloon Juice explains:
[There is] a very basic misunderstanding of that the Secret Service actually does, in practice, and I think that misunderstanding goes to their [the NRA's] paranoia and resentment. A group of us from the rural counties [of Ohio] were invited out to meet Obama on the tarmac in Toledo. It was (supposedly) some sort of local welcoming event, but it’s a campaign event, obviously. We went and it involves standing around for a couple of hours watching the Secret Service secure the whole area and us taking terse commands from them :)
In any event, a lot of the commands had to do with keeping “us” (the
public) out of what they (must) anticipate as some potential line of
fire. We kept idly wandering around (like people will do) and they kept
herding us back to “safe” areas. They pay an enormous amount of
attention to the safety of THE PUBLIC. They have TWO jobs, and only ONE
of them is protecting the President. The other is to protect people from
those who would harm the President.
That is the EXACT opposite attitude of the gun nuts, with their wildly irresponsible and dangerous push to arm teachers and school staff. There, the members of the public who might get caught up in this shoot-out they envision aren’t even considered.
I think it’s so telling that the gun nuts see this as The Shooter versus the President, just as they see armed teachers as the The Shooter versus The Teacher. They don’t SEE the rest of the people in the school. That’s an attitude, a way of thinking.
This is why letting the average armed citizen wander around in public is so dangerous to the rest of us, because almost none of them have the training or the mind set that the Secret Service and even law enforcement ingrained in them: the safety of innocent bystanders is a primary consideration. I wouldn't be nearly as opposed to having citizens armed in public if it was limited to ONLY people who had the level of training the Secret Service (for example) gets and who had to go through periodic refresher courses and re-qualification.
--Trakker
In other words, only the Elite get protection, everyone else is on their own.
Posted by: Dan D. Doty | January 17, 2013 at 11:12 AM