Trump back to wooing NRA
DALLAS Donald Trump returned to the National Rifle Association’s embrace yesterday as a popular, if occasionally unreliable, ally after a rift stemming from the Florida school rampage in February and his short dalliance with expanded background checks and gun confiscation.
The US president made no mention of such sore topics, keeping the focus on the vast common ground he shares with gun owners who helped to put him in the White House, and whose support Republicans need in November’s midterm elections to keep control of Congress.
‘‘These are real patriots,’’ Trump said of the NRA members filling a convention centre arena in Dallas for the group’s annual convention. ‘‘Your Second Amendment rights are under siege but they will never, ever be under siege as long as I amyour president. We cannot get complacent. We have to win the midterms.’’
He blamed a rash of mass shootings on ‘‘maniacs’’, and reiterated the prescriptions he has been offering for months: arming more teachers and security guards, and ending gunfree zones.
‘‘Ninety-eight per cent of mass public shootings have occurred in places where guns are banned,’’ Trump said. ‘‘There’s no sign more inviting to a mass killer than a sign that declares, ‘This school is a gunfree zone’.’’
Politics permeated the gathering, where attendees could hear rousing speeches and browse for rifles, tactical gear and cutting-edge gun sights. The NRA is depicting the convention as a show of strength meant to reassure its members of their relevance, and to dispel any notion that recent massacres have deflated their cause.
Vice-President Mike Pence warmed up the crowd – an unprecedented level of flattery in the history of America’s preeminent gun rights group, and an acknowledgment of its outsize clout in Republican politics.
‘‘You have two friends in the White House. President Donald Trump and I both stand without apology for the Second Amendment, and in this administration the right of the people to keep and bear arms will not be infringed,’’ Pence told the crowd. ‘‘Thank you for all you do to defend liberty.’’
The convention is the fourth straight to see Trump profess his love for the right to bear arms, and for the voters motivated to protect that right.
Gun control advocates accused him of bending his knee to the NRA in lieu of working to curb gun violence.
‘‘It’s the job of the president to ensure our public safety, but Trump takes his marching orders from the NRA,’’ said Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who was badly wounded in a shooting.
‘‘Trump has ignored the pleas of young people demanding safer gun laws . . . Donald Trump has allowed his presidency to be hijacked by gun lobbyists and campaign dollars. As a result, the threats to our kids and our communities remain unaddressed.’’
Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, framed attacks on gun rights after mass shootings in Florida, Texas and Nevada in the last six months as misguided.
‘‘The National Rifle Association is the only organisation in America that gets blamed for crimes our members don’t commit . . . The 5 million law-abiding members of the National Rifle Association will not accept one shred of blame for the acts of madmen and the failures of government,’’ Cox told the crowd.
Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s longtime leader, also complained that Hollywood and media elites were trying to blame the NRA for horrific crimes the group and its members had nothing to do with.
Trump eagerly lent his voice to the NRA’s push to keep attention on criminals, ‘‘maniacs’’ and ‘‘madmen’’ as various speakers labelled the killers.
He pushed the point by citing a hospital in London, where firearms are illegal but violence still erupts as criminals turn to knives. ‘‘There’s blood all over the floors of this hospital,’’ he said. ‘‘Knives, knives, knives.’’
The NRA and Trump also put a bright spotlight on the hero of a church shooting rampage in Sutherland Springs, Texas last year. Stephen Willeford, an NRA instructor who confronted the shooter, kept a bloodbath that cost 26 lives from being even worse.
‘‘We are the people that stand between the people who would do evil and our neighbours . . . Any one of you would do what I did,’’ Willeford said from the main stage. ‘‘I responded for what God told me to do.’’ TNS