by Arathy Somasekhar
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Protesters holding signs and crosses emblazoned with photos of victims of this week’s shooting at a Texas elementary school, converged on Friday outside the annual convention of the National Rifle Association, the firearms lobby , in Houston.
About 500 demonstrators, some of whom shouted “NRA get out!” and “Shame on you, it could be your kids!” challenged the thousands of members of the nation’s largest gun lobby who thronged the conference center.
The fatal shooting of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, by an 18-year-old gunman equipped with an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, is expected to limit attendance at the first convention of the NRA for three years.
Uvalde is about 450 km west of Houston.
Former Republican President Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, are scheduled to deliver speeches on Friday afternoon. Two other Republican speakers, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Vice Governor Dan Patrick, declined to speak in person.
Greg Abbott plans to deliver a pre-recorded speech and will travel to Uvalde later today. Dan Patrick said for his part that he did not wish to inflict “additional pain or grief on the families and all the people who are suffering in Uvalde.”
In the convention center’s fairgrounds, attendees could handle rifles, handguns, shotguns and assault rifles at dozens of booths, and linger at the ammunition booths of Sierra Bullets and other companies.
Tim Hickey, a Marine Corps veteran who was attending the event, dismissed the criticism. “These people are puppets and sheep for the media. They don’t change anyone’s mind,” he said.
Outside the building, Melinda Hamilton, 60, founder of Fort Worth, Texas-based Mothers of Murdered Angels, who lost her daughter and grandson to gun violence, held a vigil in a park opposite the convention.
“They have to change the laws and we have to fight to change those laws. It makes no sense that an 18-year-old can buy a gun,” she said, referring to the shooters’ ages. of Uvalde and Buffalo, New York.
Houston activist Johnny Mata called on the NRA to break up the convention and hold a ceremony honoring the victims.
“They have the audacity not to cancel out of respect for these families,” said Johnny Mata, who represented the advocacy group Greater Houston Coalition for Justice. The NRA should “stop participating in the murder of children in American schools”.
The NRA’s decision to hold its largest annual rally is part of an ongoing decades-long strategy to resist pressure for gun control dating back to the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado. in 1999.
The weekend-long convention is the first annual gathering for this group of five million members after it was canceled twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reporting Arathy Somasekhar and Callaghan O’Hare; writing by Gary McWilliams, editing by Jean-Michel Bélot)