US gun lobby chief defies critics The head of the National Rifle Association has defied widespread criticism and stood by his contentious proposal to place an armed guard in every US school in response to the Newtown killings. Wayne LaPierre, the long-time chief executive of the influential pro-gun lobby group, also indicated on Sunday that he would not take part in any conversation that involved restricting gun rights. The NRA's suggestion has been widely pilloried on both the left and right. "If it's crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy," Mr LaPierre told NBC's Meet the Press programme. I think the American people think it's crazy not to do it. It's the one thing that would keep people safe," he said, blaming the backlash to his suggestion on the "media machine" and the "anti-gun industry" in Washington. Mr LaPierre repeated his assertion that an armed guard at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, might have been able to stop Adam Lanza, who shot his way into the school and killed 20 children, aged six and seven, and six adults there. Critics have pointed out there were two armed guards at Columbine High School in Colorado when 15 people were killed in a massacre there in 1999. Mr LaPierre made his suggestion for "good guys with guns" to be immediately placed in every school in the US at a rare press conference on Friday. It was an acknowledgment that the Newtown massacre could prove a tipping point in the gun-control debate. Guns are a sensitive political issue in the US, with leaders - including President Barack Obama, until this month - usually doing their utmost to avoid talking about the constitutional right to bear arms. But as the nation reeled following the Newtown shootings, Mr Obama put gun control at the top of his second-term agenda. He is pushing for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines such as those used in Newtown, as well as the closing of a legal loophole that enables people to buy weapons at gun shows without going through background checks. A CNN/ORC poll conducted after the Newtown shooting found that a slight majority of Americans supported restrictions on guns. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, said on Sunday after Mr LaPierre's appearance on Meet the Press: "Trying to prevent gun violence without talking about guns is like trying to talk about lung cancer without talking about cigarettes." Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democratic representative who will become a senator next month, called Mr LaPierre's proposal "the most revolting, tone-deaf statement I've ever seen." Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said it was "very haunting and very disturbing." The New York Post, the conservative tabloid owned by the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, ran a full front-page picture of Mr LaPierre, headlined: "Gun nut! NRA loon in bizarre rant over Newtown. Mr Murdoch has been outspoken in calling for stricter gun control. "Terrible news today," he tweeted on the day of the Newtown rampage. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy. In 1996, John Howard, Australia's new conservative prime minister, banned assault rifles and tightened gun ownership licensing after only 12 days in office, following a shooting spree in which a man killed 35 people. Gun deaths have since halved. Meanwhile, the New York Post's ideological opposite, the New York Daily News, called Mr LaPierre the "craziest man on earth." The last time Mr LaPierre was widely criticised was in 1995, when he sent a fundraising letter to 3.5m NRA members calling federal law enforcement agents "jack-booted thugs," who wore "Nazi bucket helmets and black stormtrooper uniforms to attack law-abiding citizens." This came shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, in which dozens of federal agents were killed, and prompted George Bush senior, the former US president, to resign his lifetime membership of the NRA.