Protesters carrying placards and crosses with photos of the victims of this week’s shooting at Texas Elementary School gathered Friday outside the National Rifle Association’s annual convention of the gun lobby in Houston.
Key points:
- The shooting death of 19 students and two teachers on Tuesday by an 18-year-old gunman equipped with an AR-15-style semi-automatic assault will limit attendance at the NRA conference.
- It is the organization’s first convention in three years due to the pandemic
- Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz need to talk
Some 500 protesters – some shouting “The NRA is marching” and “Too bad they could be your children today” – mocked as thousands of members of the country’s largest arms lobby crowded the convention center.
Tuesday’s shooting of 19 elementary students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, by an 18-year-old man equipped with an AR-15-style semi-automatic assault is expected to limit attendance at the first convention. of the NRA in three years.
The gunman boasted on social media of buying high-powered weapons as soon as he turned 18.
Uvalde is about 450 miles west of Houston.
Trump, Cruz to speak
Former Republican President Donald Trump and U.S. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, are scheduled to hold talks Friday afternoon local time.
Two other Republican speakers, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, dropped out in person.
More than 90 minutes before Trump, Sen. Cruz and South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem were scheduled to speak, people lined up to pass by metal detectors and enter the auditorium.
Abbott plans to deliver a pre-recorded address and will travel to Uvalde later in the day.
Patrick said he withdrew so as not to “bring any additional pain or sorrow to the families and all the suffering in Uvalde.”
At the convention center’s exhibition floor, attendees could handle rifles, pistols, hunting and assault rifles at dozens of booths, and navigate Sierra Bullets and ammunition displays from other companies.
However, in a decision announced after the mass shooting at Uvalde Elementary School, attendees were not allowed to carry firearms to the event.
Some were walking the floor in Trump 2024 cowboy hats and red hats. A man who was waiting to get his badge was told he was a member of the NRA for life and jokingly asked if there were members available “for the later life “so that he could always remain a member.
People take their seats at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum during the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. (Reuters: Shannon Stapleton)
Tim Hickey, a Navy veteran who attended the event, dismissed the protests.
“These people are puppets and sheep for the media. They are not changing anyone’s mind,” he said.
Outside, protester Melinda Hamilton, 60, founder of Mothers of Murdered Angels, based in Fort Worth, Texas, who lost her daughter and grandson to gun violence, held a vigil in a park in front of the convention.
“We have to change the laws and we have to fight to change those laws.
“It makes no sense for an 18-year-old to be able to buy a gun,” he said, referring to the ages of Uvalde and Buffalo, New York supermarket shooters.
Houston activist Johnny Mata called on the NRA to stop the convention and hold a memorial service for the victims.
Protesters are demanding a firearms registry and universal background checks for people who want to buy weapons. (Reuters: Daniel Kramer)
“They have the audacity not to cancel with respect to these families,” said Mata, who represented the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice advocacy group.
He said the NRA should “stop being part of the murder of children in American schools.”
The NRA’s decision to continue its largest annual meeting is part of a decades-long strategy to support gun control pressure dating back to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.
There have been dozens of mass shootings in schools since then, but that has not altered the NRA’s position.
Reuters / ABC