The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." -- NRA Director Wayne LaPierre
How wrong can a guy be, huh?
Most of us thought it was ridiculous when he said it, but we understood why he said it. What else could he say? After all, selling guns is the man's job.
But those of us who adhere to Gandhi's admonition that "an eye-for-an-eye leaves everybody blind" have found our most eloquent rebuttal to Mr. LaPierre in this Georgia woman, Antoinette Tuff:
There's no telling whether Michael Brandon Hill, 20, is a "good" or a "bad" man, but he certainly did have a gun on Tuesday when he fired shots outside the Ronald McNair Discovery Learning Academy near Atlanta where Ms. Tuff works as a bookkeeper.
We all know the story of her calm, empathy, and downright heroism in the face of a man with a gun. I am the son of a black woman from Georgia. She may not have had a gun, but she sure as hell was armed. Growing up in the Deep South gives you a resiliency and a readiness for--frankly--absurd situations that nothing else can match. Women like Antoinette Tuff are why "strong, black woman" is not a cliche.
In the course of researching this diary, though, I find that Ms. Tuff may not have her paltry Wikipedia entry for long. According to Wikipedia policy, Tuff may be stricken from its record because her accomplishment is a "one-off"--something she is unlikely to do again and which is unlikely to make her remarkable going forward.
That's wrong. This woman put her life on the line to protect her school, its students, the first responders, and even the gunman. She proved Wayne LaPierre wrong in no uncertain terms.
Antoinette Tuff deserves a permanent Wikipedia entry, at least. She is an exclamation mark in today's gun debate; she proved that a bad man with a gun can be stopped by a good woman with a heart.