At NRA convention, the blame is on `evil,' not guns
HOUSTON » One by one, the gun rights activists and politicians who showed up at the National Rifle Association convention Friday said they were appalled, horrified and shaken by the massacre of 19 children and two adults a few days earlier in Uvalde, Texas.
One by one, they then rejected any suggestion that gun control measures were needed to stop mass shootings. They blamed the atrocities on factors that had nothing to do with firearms — the breakdown of the American family, untreated mental illness, bullying on social media, violent video games and the inexplicable existence of “evil.”
Above all, they sought to divert pressure to support popular overhauls like expanded background checks by seizing on the issue of school safety, amid reports that the gunman in Uvalde gained easy access to Robb Elementary School through an unguarded door.
Former President Donald Trump, speaking at the event's keynote session late Friday, called for “impenetrable security at every school all across our land,” adding that “schools should be the single hardest target.”
He began his remarks by somberly reciting the names of those killed in Uvalde to the toll of recorded church bells. But he quickly jumped on the attack, blaming President Joe Biden, who has passed billions in education aid, for increasing military spending instead of paying for greater school security.
In 2018, after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students, the Trump administration convened a school safety commission. Its most concrete step was to repeal school policies meant to ensure that minority children were not unfairly disciplined, which critics said did not directly address the issue of gun violence.
Trump was greeted by thunderous applause from supporters, some of them wearing oversized NRA convention credentials over their fading Trump-Pence T-shirts.
Yet behind the bravado was an awkward modulation between despair and defiance. A convention that promised to be a major test for an NRA weakened by scandal and internal conflict, even before Uvalde, spotlighted the struggle in the Republican Party to reconcile near-total opposition to gun control with growing outrage after a spate of mass killings facilitated by easy access to semi-automatic weapons.
“They have been doing this for years,” said Kellye Burke, 54, a gun control activist from Houston who participated in a protest against the NRA in the park across from the convention center. “They talk about the tragedy, then blame it on something other than guns.”
Ovidia Molina, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, grew emotional talking about children bearing the burden of repeated violence. “Every time I hear of another school shooting — every time I hear of another school shooting — it breaks
my heart,” she said, appearing alongside school shooting survivors and gun control activists at an event organized by teachers unions in Houston to counter the NRA convention. “It should not be their burden to carry, to make adults take action to save our children's lives.”
The convention was well attended but not entirely packed; the forum that hosted Trump was held in an auditorium that appeared to be about threequarters occupied.
The convention had its share of no-shows. Gov. Greg
Abbott of Texas and the state's senior senator, John Cornyn, both withdrew, citing other commitments. Several marquee musical performers, including Lee Greenwood, Don McLean and Larry Gatlin, opted out, citing their respect for the victims and their families.
Steve Reed, vice president of marketing at Daniel Defense, the gun manufacturer that made the weapon used in the attack, also pulled out. “We believe this week is not the appropriate time to be promoting our products in Texas at the NRA meeting,” he wrote in a statement.
The massacre dominated conversation inside the convention center. Attendees who were checking their weapons at the “knife check” desk were discussing the response times of local police — and some NRA staff and volunteers peeked into the press room where TVs were showing coverage of the story on Fox News.
Despite these concerns, many of the attendees expressed anger at the negative press coverage the NRA has received, and some urged defiance in the face of growing calls for gun control.
Sen. Ted Cruz, who preceded Trump on the podium, began his speech with a tribute to the dead in Uvalde. He then offered an unapologetic defense of gun rights, warning NRA members that the liberal “elites” would try to capitalize on the tragedy to destroy the Second Amendment.
“Now is not the time to yield to panic,” Cruz said.
Wayne LaPierre, the embattled head of the NRA, opened the convention by calling out “the evil” of the attack in Uvalde. Then he quickly pivoted to saying the federal government could not “legislate against evil” and said Biden's gun control proposals would restrict “the fundamental human right of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves.”
Trump's appearance was the high point of the convention for many in attendance. But what he said — he veered off script into his accustomed litany of complaints and digressions after discussing school safety — was arguably less important to the NRA than simply his decision to honor his commitment to come.
“Unlike some, I didn't disappoint you by not showing up,” he said to raucous applause.
In the wake of previous killings, Trump has been more willing than many of the gun rights activists who support him to embrace gun reforms — though they have been more modest ones, such as expanded background checks.
But it is Trump's boisterous, visceral and, above all, consistent support of their cause that mattered most to the hundreds of attendees, most of them White and middle-aged, who stood in line waiting to hear him speak.
“He's always with us, always supporting us, when a lot of people are running in the other direction,” said Bob Legge, 52, a construction manager from Houston. “I think him coming here, at this time, is huge.”