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Former President Donald Trump will lead a forum at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Houston this Friday, about a four-hour drive from where a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killed at least 19 children and two teachers Tuesday. .
Trump said Wednesday that he would keep appearing, in a post on his Social Truth platform.
Memorial Day weekend event is the biggest of the year for the gun lobby meeting after cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is scheduled to take place over three days and will “show more than 14 acres of the latest weapons and equipment,” according to its official website.
“The National Rifle Association is pleased to announce that former President Donald Trump will head a star-studded political heavyweight distribution at the NRA’s Legislative Action Institute,” the agency said in a statement to May.
The forum will also include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, and North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, all Republicans. The next night, “American Pie” singer Don McLean has to perform.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn (right) also planned to speak, but withdrew before the shooting for personal reasons that required him to be in Washington on Friday, a spokesman said. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) also abandoned his planned appearance for a trip to Ukraine, an aide said.
Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who challenged Abbott as governor, asked him to step down from the conference. Abbott’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Governor Abbott, if you have any decency, you will immediately withdraw from the NRA convention this weekend and urge them to hold it anywhere other than Texas.
– Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) May 25, 2022
Noem’s spokesman said he still planned to attend.
Virginia Lt. NRA Women’s Leadership Friday as part of the event in Houston. . Earle-Sears and her spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday about whether she plans to move forward after the school shooting.
The NRA forum arrives when the shooting rekindles the arms control debate in Washington. President Biden called on the United States to “confront the gun lobby” after the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade, and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) moved Tuesday evening to put two Chambers. -approved the weapons control accounts in the chamber calendar.
The NRA could not be contacted immediately to comment early on Wednesday on whether the event would continue.
Biden expresses pain and anger over the shooting: “I’m sick and tired”
Authorities say 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos was wearing armor and a rifle when he opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom around 11:32 a.m. on the penultimate day of the school year. , sending children. fleeing to save their lives. The gunman was later killed by law enforcement.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) Went viral online after delivering a speech in the Senate Tuesday night urging his colleagues to put politics aside and work together to stop the mass shootings. Murphy was in the House in 2012 when a shooting took place in his district at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where 20 children and six adults died.
“Why are we here if not to try to make sure fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through, what Uvalde is going through,” he said. “I’m here on this floor to beg, literally to get on my knees and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a way forward here.”
The Texas shooting also comes as the nation is still recovering from a mass shooting earlier this month in Buffalo, where a gunman killed 10 people in a racist attack at a grocery store.
Cruz tweeted Tuesday that he was “fervently raising children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde.”
His message provoked a rebuke from MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.), who mentioned her attendance at the NRA event and said “faith without works is dead.”
Aren’t you scheduled to head a concert for the NRA in three days, in Houston, no more and no less?
You can do more than just pray. Faith without works is dead. https://t.co/NMX64KljhL
– Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 24, 2022
The NRA event will be held Friday at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston and has been presented as a “celebration of American freedom!”
“It is truly an honor for President Trump to address NRA members for the sixth time at our NRA-ILA 2022 Leadership Forum in Houston,” NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre said in a May statement. .
He said Trump had “helped secure the freedom of generations of Americans,” appointing judges who “respect and value the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” and thanked the former president for his “support for our right to have and carry weapons “.
Trump has accepted the gun lobby, although after the Parkland High School shooting in 2018, he briefly expressed support for background checks for gun purchases and increased police power to confiscate weapons from people with mental disorders. He faced strong resistance from the NRA and Republicans and soon abandoned ideas. His administration also banned the use of cups, a device that makes it easier to fire a semi-automatic rifle faster.
The NRA is fighting a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General accusing the group’s executives of spending millions of dollars badly. The NRA, established in 1871, has more than 5 million members.
Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.