A few hours’ drive from Uvalde, the gun lobby keeps things going

Holding a sign that reads “Enough is enough,” Sharon Jones stands across from a large convention hall in downtown Houston. She and other protesters shout slogans across the street to participants at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the American gun lobby organization. †NRA, go away” they chant passionately, and “Shame on you!†

For Jones, a 60-year-old from Dallas, the shooting at an elementary school in the Texas town of Uvalde, which killed 19 children and two adults last Tuesday, was “the final straw,” she says. “It was heartbreaking, and it’s time for good, reasonable gun laws. We don’t need guns in our churches and supermarkets and schools. We must get military assault weapons off our streets.”

Read also ‘I’ve always prayed that something like this wouldn’t happen in Uvalde’

The NRA, the United States’ leading gun lobby group, to hold its annual convention in Texas’ largest city of Houston, about four hours east of Uvalde, shortly after the massacre, has sparked anger and outrage — mobilizing thousands of protesters. Members of the arms group gathered this weekend for the first in three years for their major trade show, which featured arms suppliers and speeches from gun-free advocates, including former President Donald Trump.

“The timing is terrible,” Jones says.

‘NRA has blood on its hands’

The protesters are calling on congressmen, staunch defenders of the US constitutional right to gun ownership, that the NRA has “blood on its hands” as the organization has successfully resisted efforts to more strictly regulate the availability of firearms for years. The eighteen-year-old gunman in Uvalde bought the two semi-automatic firearms with which he inflicted the massacre without difficulty.

Across the street, separated from protesters by police officers, NRA members listen resignedly behind crush barriers. †NRA, here to stay,” they chant back, under a huge convention banner with the silhouette of a bull’s head and an endorsement of the arms fair: “14 acres of guns and gear(over 55,000 square feet of guns and equipment).

“They’re silly,” says Denise Mauceli, a congressman from southeastern Texas, of the people demonstrating against the NRA. “What happened to the children in the past week has nothing to do with the NRA or with gun owners, it has to do with mental illness,” she argues, referring to the gunman’s mental state. She’s not against more rigorous mental testing of firearms buyers, she says. But she does not want to go further than that to meet the “extremist mindset” of the protesters across the street. “Taking our weapons is not a solution.”

Mauceli, who wears a necklace with a small silver bull skull, has “more than seven” firearms, she says enthusiastically, including semi-automatic. “That’s my freedom, that’s what our country is based on, our constitutional right. And I will fight to the death for that.”

Campaign donations

The NRA has been passionately committed to the rights of gun owners for decades. The organization, which has existed for more than 150 years, was a club of hobbyists in the field of shooting in the first century of its existence. Since the 1970s, the organization has increasingly become a lobby group that promotes – and increasingly opposes – the interests of gun owners in regulation.

The group, which it claims has about five million members, has become increasingly inflexible in recent decades in its defense of the right to possession of firearms, enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution† Since 1989, the NRA has spent $171 million on federal government lobbying, according to the AP news agency. The group also binds politicians to campaign donations and gives them reports on their firearms policy; a so-called ‘A-rating’ is a coveted hallmark for many Republicans. The organization thus became a fiery driver of the polarized culture battle over firearms in the US.

Notable was the NRA’s response to the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed 20 schoolchildren and six adults. For a while it seemed as if the firearms stalemate in the US would be broken after that. But after some hesitation, NRA chairman Wayne LaPierre turned against that. The best defense against school shootings was more guns, he said: armed guards or even armed teachers.

Read also An armed security guard at the door makes American schools less safe

Trump: Away with gun-free zones in schools

After the death of nineteen schoolchildren in Uvalde, this was immediately the story of supporters of firearms. Trump made it clear Friday during his speech to the convention, in which he called for an end to gun-free zones around schools. “As the old saying goes, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good person with a gun,” Trump said to a half-filled audience.

Remarkably, the NRA is hardly needed to make that point: Opposition to virtually all forms of gun control has become an article of faith among Republicans, especially in the Trump era. The NRA has also lost influence since 2018 due to an internal struggle and legal and financial problems, including a scandal surrounding the extravagant personal expenses of LaPierre, who allegedly used the NRA coffers. The Attorney General of New York State, where the NRA is based, is trying to get the organization dissolved.

Gun control proponents see a potential opening in the weakening of the NRA. But due to the extremely narrow majority of Democrats in the Senate, progress seems difficult to achieve. Senators from both parties have agreed to at least enter into a conversation in response to Uvalde, but the chances of that yielding anything are extremely small.

conspiracy theories

For members of the NRA, new gun control restrictions are a specter and fuel for conspiracy theories. “They are trying to chisel away our right to guns with the ultimate goal of disarming Americans,” said Carlos Santana, a California cowboy hat congressman. “So that they can exercise full control over the population. The only thing keeping this administration in check is that millions of civilians in the US are armed. We are the only country where the constitution says we have the right to defend ourselves. I am very grateful for that.”

Across the street, Tiffiny Williams from San Antonio is anything but grateful. She protests the NRA with a sign that reads, “Texas loves its assault weapons more than its kids.” She wants measures to be taken to end many major shootings in the US. “I stand here today to say: we are the people and we want this to stop. We don’t want assault weapons in anyone’s hands.”