Mental health experts recoiled at comments by NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre blaming violence on "lunatics" and "monsters" roaming the streets — and touting more guns as a form of protection

The American Psychiatric Association and a number of leading researchers denounced the comments as offensive and inaccurate.

"If it's crazy to call for putting police and armed security in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy," LaPierre said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

"I have people all over the country calling me saying, 'Wayne, I went to bed safer last night because I have a firearm. Don't let the media try to make this a gun issue."

Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said LaPierre was playing into fears that are uniquely Americans.

"Mr. LaPierre is right when he says his members feel stronger, safer, more powerful with weapons in their houses and in their hands — but whether in fact they are safer is another question," he said.

"To the extent that the NRA stokes the fears of ordinary people about the dangers in society, and sells them on the notion that only a gun, or several guns, can protect them from the dangers that lurk outside, they have more members," he added.

"It's completely in their interest to try to promote that vision of America as an intrinsically dangerous place where one needs to be constantly on guard."

Appelbaum said the comments, while ridiculed by many pundits, would play well with the NRA's base — and make things harder for people suffering from mental illness, most of whom are not violent.

"There's no question that his comments were intended to, and will in fact harm people with mental illness, in a variety of ways. His comments stoke the fears of the public which already exist about people with mental illness," he said.