NRA chief lashes out at advocates of gun control

WASHINGTON: The head of the National Rifle Association lashed out at gun control advocates on Thursday, calling them Democratic elites who are politicizing the latest mass school shooting in the United States to chip away at the country’s constitutionally guaranteed gun rights.

NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre delivered a full-throated defence of using guns to stop gun violence, weighing into a long-running political and cultural divide over access to weapons that has been inflamed by last week’s shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 students and staff.

“The elites don’t care not one whit about America’s school system and schoolchildren,” LaPierre told a friendly audience of young conservatives outside Washington. “Their goal is to eliminate the 2nd Amendment and our firearms freedoms so they can eradicate all individual freedoms.”

LaPierre, speaking at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference, portrayed the NRA as the true protector of the country’s schoolchildren. He bolstered a call by Republican President Donald Trump to arm teachers following the Parkland shooting, and offered free training.

“We must immediately harden our schools,” he said. “Every day, young children are being dropped off at schools that are virtually wide open, soft targets for anyone bent on mass murder.”