Nineteen students and two adults are dead after a South Texas elementary school shooting. Parents and families are grieving an unspeakable loss. But this Friday, less than 300 miles from the site of that rampage, former President Donald Trump, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and other Republican lawmakers and officials will “celebrate the Second Amendment” at a conference hosted by the National Rifle Association.
According to an announcement by the NRA unveiling the event—known as the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) Leadership Forum—it will be a “freedom-filled” weekend-long forum for “patriots” to “ celebrate freedom, firearms, and the Second Amendment.”
Trump is scheduled to speak at the event. Firearms will be prohibited because of his attendance, per the Secret Service. In addition to Cruz, Crenshaw, and Abbott, the NRA also notes that Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem are slated to appear.
Cornyn, however, has since backed out, according to Politico. He cited “an unexpected change in his schedule” that happened prior to the shooting in Uvalde. When Daily Kos contacted Cornyn’s office Wednesday, a staffer was unable to confirm independently if he will forgo the conference.
Daily Kos also reached out to other officials slated to attend. Senator Cruz’s office said the lawmaker was “undecided.” Crenshaw did not immediately respond to a request for comment but a member of his staff said that he was “traveling.” Politico reported just before noon on Wednesday that he would not attend since he was traveling in Ukraine. Governor Abbott and North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson did not immediately return a request for comment. Nor did South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
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Beto O’Roure, who hopes to oust Abbott from the gubernatorial spot, called on the incumbent to skip the money-making event for the NRA.
“Gov. Abbott, if you have any decency, you will immediately withdraw from this weekend’s NRA convention and urge them to hold it anywhere but Texas,” O’Rourke said on Wednesday.
It all seems like a bit of horrible deja vu. After all, the U.S. has seen no less than 27 school shootings since Jan. 1 and the Gun Violence Archive reported on Thursday that there have been 213 mass shootings in America so far this year, including the one at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. (For context, a mass shooting is defined as an event where four or more people are shot or killed. The shooter is not factored into that equation.)
And yet, here America finds itself once again.
The NRA conference this weekend is still on. A representative for the association did not immediately return a request for comment to Daily Kos.
This is an unsurprising sequence of events given the immovable stance that the NRA has taken since 1999, at least, when 13 students and one teacher were killed by two teenage shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Several others were badly injured during that event.
NPR last year obtained recordings of phone calls where NRA leaders and other association officials were heard scrambling to figure out how they could hold their annual convention with the Columbine tragedy then just a day old.
“Everything we do here has a downside. Don’t anybody kid yourself about this great macho thing of going down there and showing our chest and showing how damn tough we are… We are in deep shit on this deal… and so anything we do here is going to be a matter of trying to decide the best of a whole bunch of very, very bad choices,” NRA official Kayne Robinson, said on the 1999 call.
The NRA did not exactly dispute the call, but told NPR in November 2021 that it was “disappointing that anyone would promote an editorial agenda against the NRA by using shadowy resources and ‘mystery tapes’ in order to conjure up the tragic events of over 20 years ago.”
Notably, according to the tapes, NRA officials also effectively described lawmakers in Washington as their pawns. They will “do whatever the NRA proposes,” NPR reported, and according to at least one person heard strategizing on the conference call, the NRA would also “secretly provide [lawmakers] with talking points” in the wake of Columbine to help them spin the story.
Jim Baker, an NRA lobbyist heard on the 1999 strategy call lamented the media coverage.
“At the same period where they’re going to be burying these children, we’re going to be having media… trying to run through the exhibit hall, looking at kids fondling firearms, which is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible juxtaposition,” he said.
Another NRA official, Jim Land, insisted that the show must go on.
“I got to tell you, we got to think this thing through because if we tuck tail and run, we’re going to be accepting responsibility for what happened out there,” Land said.
A consultant for the association, Tony Makris, agreed with Land at the time. But, there was another side to that coin, he said. “If you don’t appear to be deferential in honoring the dead, you end up being a tremendous shithead who wouldn’t tuck tail and run, you know? So it's a double-edged sword.”
The 1999 convention in Denver ended up going forward.
The same NRA playbook has been in place for years and appears to be firmly couched now as the NRA’s convention for 2022 kicks off Friday.
Governor Abbott is slated to hold a press conference on Thursday afternoon where he will be joined by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and others, including Senators Cornyn and Cruz. Abbott is expected to provide information on the state’s “coordinated response” to the killings at Robb Elementary School.
On Thursday, posting on his social media site Truth Social, Trump confirmed that he would still attend the convention.
In a post that reads like it was written by anyone other than Trump himself, the former twice-impeached president posted: “No words can express the sorrow and grief of this absolutely horrible event. It is a moment in time which will never be forgotten!”
