Is it me or has the NRA revved up their crazy genes to a new and whacked out high lately? Maybe the Sochi Olympics has interfered with the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon on our oceans. Last week, their draft-dodging NRA stooge Ted Nugent went on a hate-filled anti-liberal tirade at a gun show and now we have actor and NRA company man R.Lee Emery exposing his own uneducated and ridiculous point of view on bullying and suicide.
National Rifle Association board member R. Lee Ermey, best known for his drill sergeant role in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, criticized "neutered" boys who commit suicide because of bullying for not standing up to their tormenters.
Ermey made the comment during a February 7 appearance on an NRA News show to preview his upcoming show on The Sportsman Channel Saving Private K-9. Claiming that "we've neutered all the young boys in this country,"
Ermey said, "We've got little kids committing suicide because somebody bullied them in the school yard. Well, you know what, I was bullied when I was a kid, but I tried diplomatically to get out of the situation. If that didn't work, then I would resort to force, I would pop the guy in the snot locker, drop him down on the deck, and he would think twice before he came and bullied me again."
Emery used the old "what I did when I was young" defense that conservatives love so much -- in this case, to attack kids who have taken their own lives. It harkens back to a long-lost age where innocence was won and lost by a single punch to the jaw. Earth to R. Lee, I know cons wish we still lived in the days when children worked eighty hours a week, but those days are long gone. Bullying is the third leading cause of death among young people in our country and with social media being such a pivotal part of everyday life, bullying just doesn't leave itself at school. It clings onto your every waking moment. (Here's more detailed information and devastating statistics about bullying.)
R. Lee has a history of spectacularly insipid thinking to go along with his latest outburst of ignorance.
In promoting his book Gunny's Rules: How to Get Squared Away Like a Marine -- which he said "tells you how to take command of your life, get off welfare, unemployment, food stamps and regain a little bit of your self-respect" -- Ermey lamented that "nowadays, lazy is our new cripple."
In 2010, Ermey was fired from a Geico insurance commercial acting gig after stating during a speech at a Toys for Tots event, "I think we should all rise up, and we should stop this administration from what they're doing because they are destroying this country. They're driving us into bankruptcy so that they can impose socialism on us."
