School shooting conspiracy theories and denials feature at NRA convention

Gun rights supporters at the NRA convention defy calls for tougher controls on weapons.

Donald Trump and other senior Republicans made speeches at this year’s NRA convention. Picture: Live News

The National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention closed yesterday (Sunday) as protests continued outside and conspiracy theories spread in the shadow of the Uvalde massacre.

Gun rights supporters at the convention in Houston, Texas, defied calls for tougher controls on weapons after the school shooting in Uvalde less than 300 miles away.

Protesters outside chanted “shame” and held placards declaring: “Protect children, not guns.” Many inside, however, saw themselves as victims, easy targets for public blame in the aftermath of the attack.

Some believed the timing of the killings was too convenient, just three days before the NRA convention opened on Friday with headline speeches from Donald Trump and other senior Republican Party members.

Several guests claimed the shooting was deliberately orchestrated to overshadow the event with a public outcry and demands to roll back gun rights under the Second Amendment.

“Why did it happen three days ago?” Jim Hollis, an NRA benefactor from St Louis, Missouri, asked the Politico website. “I’m not sure there are not forces someplace that somehow find troubled people and nurture and develop them and push them for their own agendas.”

Hollis said that the gunman in Uvalde “could have walked in there with a baseball bat and possibly killed as many kids”.

He admitted that he feared the attack on gun rights was “strengthening”.

He said: “There are people who thought they could use this Uvalde situation to dampen this [convention].”

Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke speaks to protesters in support of gun control. Picture: AFP

Many at the meeting said the solution to mass shootings in schools was not to tighten rules around gun ownership but to give teachers and staff on campus more weapons.

Several politicians pulled out of the event. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, withdrew after Uvalde. Those who did attend mounted a defence of gun rights, led by Trump. The former president called for a “top to bottom security overhaul of schools”, including the arming of teachers with concealed guns.

Soccer teammates of Tess Mata, who died in the shooting, cry, supported by their mothers, as they visit a makeshift memorial outside the Uvalde County Courthouse in Texas on May 26. Picture: AFP

Trump said the answer to such shootings lay in security guards for every school, a “drastic change” in approach to mental health provision and work to “harden” education buildings with a single point of entry, metal detectors and doors that lock from the inside.

“Above all, from this day forward, every school in America should have a police officer or an armed resource officer on duty at all times,” he said. “This is not a matter of money, it is a matter of will. The United States has dollars 40 billion to send to Ukraine, we should be able to do whatever is necessary.”

Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, said the “real goal” of left-wing politicians was “disarming America”.

Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, Florida, speaking from the convention, told the right-wing Newsmax website that schools should consider arming PE teachers and librarians.

“My first round draft pick for helping us protect those schools are the faculty, those that are moving around the campus . . . PE teachers, the maintenance person . . . the librarian,” he said.

“Those are the people who don’t have an immediate responsibility to tend to those . . . children that are in their class.”

The Times