Rarely is gun control out of the public eye in America, yet following a wave of recent shootings it has never been more contro- versial. I’m meeting the head of the Na- tional Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, in the Covent Garden branch of TGI Friday’s, midway through his official visit to the UK. Walking in, I find LaPierre propping up the bar, spurs glinting on his boots, hat pulled down low across his face and a tumbler of whiskey rolling between his palms. Next to him, a table of excited children freeze during a heated game of pass-the-parcel, and a single party popper echoes out.
After exchanging pleasantries, I com- ment on the prophetic nature of his half empty glass, with many Americans seeing the current state of gun laws with a ‘glass half empty’ kind of pessimism. Meeting my gaze, he downs the whiskey and asks for another. “It’s empty now, boy, cuz no- body ain’t never gun’ take away my con- stitutional right to a JD on the rocks.” I ask whether he believes that he shot him- self in the foot when he reacted to calls for stricter weapons restrictions with ‘the only way to stop a good guy with a gun is a bad guy with a gun’. Moving closer, he assures me that he has never shot himself in the foot, with the exception of an ac- cident on his ranch involving a randy bull and a semi-automatic M1 Carbine rifle. Breath heavy with alcohol and curly fries, he adamantly reiterates his ultra-conserv- ative stance on weapons, unwilling to back down.
Feeling the need to lighten the atmos- phere, I ask him a less accusatory ques- tion, namely what he believes has caused the rise in high profile shootings in recent years. The answer I receive is unsurprising, “the goddamn culture of kids these days” being brutalised by “games like Mortal Kombat and Spyro the Dragon”. He then goes on to claim that video games aren’t the only area of popular culture which promotes violence, quoting lyrics such as ‘tell me the days of the week bitch, or I’m a blow that cereal outta your fucking bowl’ from Dr. Dre and Rebecca Black’s recent hit Dre-gorian CalenDre.
When I point out the low level of gun crime in the UK LaPierre’s mood dark- ens. He challenges me to a duel, slamming his plastic tumbler down so hard that the curly straw bounces to the ground. I re- fuse and LaPierre flies into a fierce rage, tearing down a life size inflatable alligator from the adjacent wall and wrestling it to the floor, before firing sixteen rounds into its belly. Punctured, air spews out of the sagging beast, causing it to career across the room and land slap in the middle of a birthday party. Amid the screams of trau- matised 8 year olds, LaPierre downs his whiskey, puts on his Stetson and passes out.