NRA recasts Texas tragedy
Hero’s story used to counter gun control activists
DALLAS — The National Rifle Association came to Texas on a mission, determined to fight the perception that Second Amendment political forces are on the defensive going into this year’s crucial midterm elections.
They found their new rallying point here.
Upward of 80,000 NRA members — President Donald Trump and association officials call it a record turnout — left the four-day convention to fight for Second Amendment-friendly candidates nationwide, using a Texas tragedy as a grisly counterpoint to gun-control activists who have built momentum after a deadly Florida high school shooting.
The terror at a church in Sutherland Springs that left 27 dead last November was an inescapable presence at the NRA’s annual meetings. In heavily produced promotional videos aired during the meetings, in speeches by NRA officials and politicians, and in conversations between rank-andfile members, it was clear that the worst mass shooting in Texas history has taken on a different feel from other rampages across the nation.
While the deaths of 17 students and teachers at
the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., mobilized gun-control activists, the NRA and its advocates have cast Sutherland Springs as a counterweight of sorts. Vice President Mike Pence used the Texas drama in his Friday address to thousands of gun owners.
“As America would learn on that fateful morning, when one man heard the gunshots, he ran toward the danger, his firearm in hand,” Pence said. “He shot the attacker twice, and with another man’s help, they pursued that murderer in a highspeed chase. While the losses that day were indescribable, what was clear later is that it actually could have been worse.”
Pence did not talk about the attacker, Devin Kelley, whose history included domestic violence and an Air Force court martial. Despite that, Kelley was able to get an AR-15 rifle to open fire on the church where his mother-in-law usually worshiped. Instead, Pence and other speakers focused on what happened next — when a soft-spoken neighbor to the church and plumber named Stephen Willeford grabbed his AR-15 and confronted Kelley.
That Willeford is also a longtime NRA member and an NRA pistol instructor made him a hero for those who argue the best way to stop would-be mass shooters is to ensure more regular citizens have guns to confront them when police cannot.
None of that was lost on Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action lobbying arm.
“If a deranged monster comes into your church and starts murdering innocent people, your best bet is an NRA member,” Cox said to a standing ovation.
But for the thousands of gun control activists who assembled a few blocks from the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, the story of Sutherland Springs as a success has a major flaw.
“A lot of people were already dead before he could get there,” said Gyl Switzer, executive director of Texas Gun Sense, a nonprofit gun-control advocacy group based in Austin.
Switzer said Kelley’s ability to get an AR-15 and kill so many people before the “good guy” who lived across the street could get to the scene proves the need for reform.
‘Their poster child’
Nonetheless at the convention hall, Willeford was brought on stage to be toasted and given a lifetime membership to the nation’s oldest gun organization. He was featured in a promotional video aired prior to Trump’s speech on Friday, telling the story of what happened inside the church. Later, interviews with NRA public relations people were broadcast via closed-circuit televisions throughout the sprawling 15-acre gun show and on NRA-TV.
In short, the 55-year-old Willeford is fast becoming an icon of the gun-rights movement in the mold of Charlton Heston, Ted Nugent and Wayne LaPierre.
“He’s right out of central casting,” said Mark McKinnon, a longtime political adviser in Texas who was among those at Friday’s sessions. “He’s becoming their poster child. I think you’re going to see a lot more of him.”
He’s been making his voice heard in politics, too, lending his name to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz during the Texas Republican’s reelection campaign kickoff events last month. Cruz frequently cites Willeford’s actions as an emblem of a “Tough as Texas” slogan he’s building his campaign around.
“I think it illustrates powerfully how we can stop these mass murders before they happen,” Cruz told reporters at the NRA convention on Friday.
Cruz said that, in the days after the church killings, families of the dead and wounded pleaded with him personally to not let what happened result in them losing their guns.
The hero’s role has been a major adjustment from Willeford’s former, quieter life in a rural community about an hour outside San Antonio.
“I’m nothing special,” he said, peering out at the crowd from beneath the bill of his black cowboy hat. “Every one of you would do what I did.”
Around the convention center, Willeford was mobbed by well-wishers. On his way from a bathroom break, two women stopped him to pose with him for a selfie.
“I guess this is my 15 minutes of fame,” he said afterward, with a laugh. “Eventually it will end and I’ll go back to my normal life — and I have a good one.”
Gov. Greg Abbott told NRA members bluntly why he thinks Willeford is important to the NRA and to Texas: “Because he had a gun, he saved lives.”
While the Florida high school killings have spurred legions of young adults and teens to take up the cause for gun control, NRA leaders and members were aggressive in ensuring younger people were on display throughout the conference.
Part of Texas culture
On Friday, Will Robertson was a self-described “kid in a candy store” as he walked through exhibitor displays and their array of pistols, rifles, hunting apparel and military-grade weapons.
Trailing behind were his three sons, ages 6, 8 and 11, each dressed in cammo shirts.
“For folks like me, this is a dream,” the 41-year-old Army veteran said while perusing Remington rifles. “I live on a ranch west of Fort Worth. I’ve been around firearms all my life. My daddy gave me my first gun at 8. His daddy did the same thing. I take my boys hunting. My wife shoots for a hobby.
“I know a lot of people think having guns makes me weird or crazy. But it’s part of the culture in Texas. There’s nothing wrong with it here.”
Dick Gentry, 68, agreed that guns are part of the culture, especially in rural areas and small towns where law enforcement may be too far away to respond quickly to a crisis. Gentry, who grew up in Marlin, said that he usually had a rifle nearby while working cattle. He used it “occasionally to shoot a coyote or a snake.”
“The problem with gun rights is this,” he said. “Most people in the United States don’t have a firearm, don’t have any clue how to use one safely.”
In Willeford and Sutherland Springs, the NRA and its supporters see a bulwark against a perceived exploitation of the Parkland tragedy. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn tried to make that point to reporters while carefully not criticizing the teenagers who survived the Florida killings.
“They are right to express their concerns,” Cornyn said. “No parent wants their child going to school to be worried about the possibility that an active shooter could break into the school and injure and kill them. But I also think we need to have our eyes wide open, too, because I think some political opportunists are going to see this as an opportunity to exploit this issue.” Mike Ward contributed to
this report.