Substitute while the actions of the article are loading
Houston – Outside the National Arms Association congress, covered by high-profile cancellations following a massacre at a Texas primary school, protesters gathered on Friday to demand gun control and answers from authorities.
Republican lawmakers who chose to keep their plans to speak at the annual meeting sounded a different note: Defiance.
Former President Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), among other speakers, broadly rejected proposals for new restrictions and instead called for more school security or mental health checks, such as at the same time, they issue obscure warnings about alleged democratic conspiracies to take up arms.
NRA weakened. But gun rights are driving the Republican Party more than ever.
“We all know they want a complete confiscation of weapons, know that this will be the first step,” Trump told an audience in an auditorium about 300 miles from the site of the mass shooting in Uwalde, Texas. “After they take the first step, they will take the second step, the third, the fourth, and then you will have a completely different view of the second amendment.”
The fiery speeches contrasted with a minute of silence at a congress on the 19 children and two teachers killed in Tuesday’s massacre, which again sparked calls from Democrats and advocates for new weapons security measures. However, even stronger than after the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School nearly a decade ago, however, the NRA has sent a clear message that the lobby and its supporters do not see the new restrictions as negotiable.
GOP spokesmen shifted the blame for the latest tragedy from the possession of powerful weapons to a number of other culprits, such as reduced church attendance, harassment of physical and social media, weak families, violent video games, opioid abuse, lack of mental health services , multiple entry points to schools and unlocked doors.
Speakers also moved from condemning the evil of the school shooter from Uwalde to denigrating the “elites”, the media, the Democrats and the “communist Marxists”, to applause from the inferior but vocal crowd.
“The elite that dominates our culture tells us that firearms are at the root of the problem,” Cruz said. “It is much easier to slander your political opponents and demand responsible citizens lose their constitutional rights than to investigate a cultural disease that breeds indescribable evils.”
Abbott, who appeared in a recorded message while holding a press conference in Uwalde that included criticism of law enforcement failures, rejected the new arms restrictions.
“Just as the laws did not stop the killer, we will not allow his evil actions to prevent us from uniting the community he tried to destroy,” Abbott said in the video.
In the decade since Sandy Hook, the NRA has increasingly allied itself with the Republican Party, expanding its focus on gun rights to include other issues and complaints of the Conservative Cultural War and betting on Trump in the 2016 NRA campaign. to project strength after years of turmoil as the organization is battling a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General that the executive directors allegedly spent improperly.
The NRA continued the program despite calls for relocation, postponement or repeal of respect for Uwalde’s victims. A growing crowd of protesters in the park across the street shouted “Shame” to those present as they entered the convention center. In an interview before the speeches, NRA board member David A. Keane said the organization was not considering changing the program because it would inconvenience thousands of people who planned to attend.
Other board members were more assertive in their response to critics. “If we backed off every time there was controversy, we wouldn’t be worthy of anyone’s support,” said Robert L. Barr Jr., a former Georgia congressman.
Trump confirmed the backlash with the speakers who withdrew, a list of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (right). “Unlike some, I didn’t disappoint you by not showing up,” he said.
Trump and Cruz have called for school buildings to be hardened, with Trump calling for the removal of unarmed school grounds and Cruz for schools to have a door guarded by armed police or trained military veterans – a plan likely to be met. with fire safety laws requiring more than one exit in buildings. Cruz also called for armored doors and lockable classroom doors.
“As the saying goes, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Trump said, quoting NRA chief executive Wayne Lapierre’s remark nearly a decade ago after a mass shooting school in Newtown, Connecticut.
On Friday, LaPierre highlighted the NRA’s efforts to train schools and local authorities and called for more funding for security – despite growing questions about whether Uwalde law enforcement officers acted fast enough to stand up or stop the massacres there.
“Restricting the basic human right of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves is not the answer,” LaPierre said. “We, the NRA, will never, but never stop fighting for the right of the innocent and law-abiding to defend themselves from the evil criminal element that plagues our society, because we know that there can be no freedom, security, safety without law. to those who obey the law to carry weapons for self-defense. “
Trump also criticized federal aid to Ukraine, saying that if the United States could afford the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the government should build more hardened schools. Ukraine’s line drew applause from the crowd, which woke him up to read the remarks in a flat affect. Later in his speech, Trump deviated from the right to bear arms to rehearse his standard rally material, with frequent shouts from the public, including chanting a phrase that is a code of profanity against President Biden and when Trump discusses the 2020 election. “We won!”
Trump has gone so far as to downplay the social justice demonstrations that followed the assassination of George Floyd in 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer. “The same Democrat politicians who staged riots over a police assassination two years ago are stunned by the growing death toll from their own radical policies,” Trump said. Cruz called Chicago a “hell hole for murder” to applaud the audience.
Trump said that as president he had shown too much leniency to democratic politicians who run big cities, and that he would have acted differently if he had been re-elected.
“If I ever do it again, namely run for president and win, I will no longer feel obligated to do it that way,” Trump said. “I would fight violent crimes like never before.”
Trump called a man from Fort Worth named Jack Wilson, who killed a gunman at his church in 2020. “You are still my president,” Wilson told Trump as people in the audience stood and applauded.
Add Comment