NRA goes on offensive.
Group assails media, calls for more armed security
After a week of media silence following the school shooting in Florida, the National Rifle Association has gone on the offensive in its first public response to the massacre, pushing back against law enforcement officials, the media, gun control advocates and calls for stricter gun laws from the teenage survivors of the attack.
The gun rights group — a powerful force in American politics — used speeches and videos to try to blunt an emotionally charged wave of calls for new gun restrictions since a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle killed 17 people at a Parkland, Fla., high school. As the teens who escaped the bloodshed have passionately campaigned for new laws, it appears the politics around the fraught issue of gun control are shifting, with President Donald Trump and some conservative lawmakers expressing a willingness to consider at least modest measures.
While the NRA initially held back from the fray, that changed as a spokeswoman debated survivors of the attack during a heated town hall and then Wayne LaPierre, the group’s chief executive, forcefully decried gun control advocates and the media for its coverage of the shooting.
“They don’t care about our schoolchildren,” LaPierre said Thursday morning near the start of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md. “They want to make all of us less free.”
LaPierre also restated his belief that more armed security would stop school shootings, echoing Trump, while calling on parents and local authorities to beef up security on campuses. Later in the day, the Broward County Sheriff acknowledged that an armed and uniformed deputy who was assigned to the Florida school did not enter building while the attack was happening last week, taking a defensive position outside while 17 people were killed; the deputy has since resigned.
“Evil walks among us,” LaPierre said. “And God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids.”
LaPierre’s speech came on the heels of the NRA releasing a video claiming that “the mainstream media love mass shootings.” The video argued that members of the media benefit from covering mass shootings and use them “to juice their ratings and push their agenda.”
Since the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, media coverage has been dominated by the attack’s survivors, who responded with a push of furious activism unseen after previous mass shootings. Teenagers who hid in closets and ran for their lives quickly began calling for increased gun control, assailing the NRA and organizing around their message.
The survivors called for new gun restrictions in a rally Wednesday in Tallahassee, the Florida capital, and then reiterated the pleas that night at a town hall hosted by CNN and attended by lawmakers and Dana Loesch, an NRA spokeswoman.
Loesch, speaking before LaPierre, echoed the NRA’s advertisement and castigated the news media with racially charged remarks.
“Many in legacy media love mass shootings,” Loesch said. “I’m not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold.”