NRA convention draws top GOP 2024 hopefuls after shootings
INDIANAPOLIS — Top Republican hopefuls for the 2024 presidential race vowed Friday at the National Rifle Association's annual convention to defend the Second Amendment at all costs, suggesting that new firearms restrictions in the wake of mass shootings in the country would only hurt law-abiding gun owners.
The three-day gathering kicked off with thousands of the organization’s most active members at Indianapolis’ convention center mere days after mass shootings in Nashville and Louisville. Last year's NRA convention came just days after the massacre at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
It illustrated the stark reality that such shootings have become enough of the fabric of American life that the NRA can no longer schedule around them. Nor does it really want to: The convention falls on the second anniversary of the mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis that killed nine people.
And that certainly didn’t keep GOP White House hopefuls away, underscoring the political power of the NRA.
“Gun-hating politicians should never go to bed unafraid of what this association and all of our millions of members can do to their political careers,” said its CEO Wayne LaPierre.
Instead of fewer guns, former Vice President Mike Pence called for more institutions for the mentally ill and federal funding for armed school officers. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he had resisted implementing any gun restrictions in his state despite that stance being unpopular. Former President Donald Trump was set to speak later Friday.
Some speakers said they were saddened by the recent shootings, but also spent far more time slamming Biden administration policy along the U.S.-Mexico border. That was fine with many attendees.
“No one wants to see the violence you see in schools and stuff today,” Randy Conner, a pistol and rifle instructor for the NRA from Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, “But I don’t think taking the guns away from ordinary citizens is going to change any of that at all.”
Trump's appearance at the NRA will be his first public event since being arrested and arraigned in New York last week on felony charges stemming from a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign. His Secret Service protection means attendees can't have guns at the convention.
It will also be the first time he and Pence have addressed the same campaign event on the same day since their estrangement following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Pence is considering his own 2024 bid.
A former Indiana governor, Pence, was met by scattered boos before his NRA speech, despite it being his home turf. The former vice president skipped a number of conservative gatherings in recent years, including the Conservative Political Action Conference, as well as the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual gathering, after he was booed and heckled there in 2021.
Pence noted shootings at a Louisville, Kentucky, bank that killed five people this week and at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27 that killed three 9-year-olds and three staff members. But he said, “We don’t need gun control. We need crime control.”
“We don’t need lectures about the liberties of law-abiding citizens," Pence said. “We need solutions to protect our kids.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Trump critic who announced his 2024 campaign after news of the former president's indictment broke, drew at least one yelled obscenity after he suggested President Joe Biden was "praying” for a rematch with Trump in 2024 and declared, “We don’t need a rerun of 2020."
Others offering video messages were former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who began her 2024 campaign in February, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who announced a presidential exploratory committee this week. DeSantis, seen as a top rival to Trump even though he’s yet to jump into the race, also spoke briefly in virtual remarks.
“I’ve resisted calls to take up gun control, even when such a stand is superficially unpopular,” DeSantis said.
Pain over the Louisville and Nashville shooting rampages has crossed party lines. Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear talked about having a friend killed in the Louisville shooting, while Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he had friends killed during the Nashville school attack.
Yet the NRA convention's tone was as defiant as last year, when the group held its convention in Houston just three days after the massacre of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school across Texas in the town of Uvalde.
Further overlapping with recent tragedy, Pence and some of the other speakers plan to follow up their NRA speeches by traveling to Nashville to meet with top GOP donors gathered there.
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