HOUSTON, May 27 (Reuters) – Protesters carrying placards and crosses with photos of victims of Texas Elementary School shooting protested Friday at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Houston as the lobby of the weapons were under pressure after the massacre.
Attendance was reduced and speakers and musicals were kept away as about 500 protesters, some shouting “NRA march” and “Too bad they could be your children today,” mocked attendees at the George Convention Center. R. Brown.
Tuesday’s shooting of 19 students in Uvalde, Texas, students and two teachers by an 18-year-old gunman equipped with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle once again focused on the NRA, the largest lobby. of arms of the country and an important donor for the members of the Congress. mostly Republicans.
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Uvalde is about 280 miles (450 km) west of Houston.
Video footage from Houston’s main auditorium, which has about 3,600 people, showed that it was halfway through when former President Donald Trump took the stage on Friday afternoon.
Other speakers, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, denounced calls for new gun control laws and called for more spending on school safety and law enforcement.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick stopped commenting in person at the event. Patrick said he withdrew so as not to “bring any additional pain or sorrow to the families and all the suffering in Uvalde.”
Cruz, a Texas Republican, said in a speech at the meeting that communities needed weapons to stay safe. “Taking up arms will not make them safer.”
Outside, in a park near the convention center, protester Harper Young, a 15-year-old Houston student, held up a placard and stifled tears. “It’s completely unacceptable for gun violence to be repeated over and over again. It’s horrible.”
In a country where gun rights are enshrined in the Constitution and arms sales are on the rise, the NRA is likely to reject new demands for more arms control measures despite the latest shooting.
The Republican Party, which has thwarted the Democratic Party’s efforts in Congress to legislate stricter gun measures, is closely aligned with the NRA.
The NRA’s decision to continue with 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. Read more
Wayne LaPierre, executive director of the NRA, addressed school murders, but said gun owners “love our nation, we love our children and grandchildren … That’s why we will always love and protect our fundamental right to to defend ourselves and our communities. “
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, rejected suggestions that teachers should be armed to thwart future shootings.
“More weapons equals more violence,” he said. “Assault weapons should be banned,” he said outside the meeting.
Houston activist Johnny Mata called on the NRA to suspend the convention and hold a memorial service for the victims of Uvalde.
“They have the audacity not to cancel with respect to these families,” said Mata, who represented the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice advocacy group. The NRA should “stop being part of the murder of children in American schools.”
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 their minds, “he said.
At the convention center’s exhibition floor, attendees handled rifles, pistols, hunting and assault rifles at dozens of booths, and navigated Sierra Bullets and ammunition displays from other companies.
The weekend convention was the group’s first annual meeting of five million members after two previous cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Posters celebrating its 150th anniversary hung in the exhibition hall.
In a pre-recorded video, Texas Gov. Abbott said, “As jeans and as Americans, we mourn and mourn with these families.” But he said the laws did not stop the UValde shooter and rejected calls to say “the laws will not stop the evil villains from committing these atrocities.”
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Report by Arathy Somasekhar and Callaghan O’Hare; written by Gary McWilliams Edited by Alistair Bell
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