The NRA Is Shrinking. Its Politics Are Stronger Than Ever.

[marmar]

The NRA Is Shrinking. Its Politics Are Stronger Than Ever.
On the scene at the group’s annual convention in Houston, Texas.

BY WILL VAN SANT
MAY 30, 20225:00 PM


At the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on Friday, National Rifle Association members spent hours in line, waiting to be cleared by the Secret Service to enter the marquee political event of the group’s annual convention. Chairs were distributed along the queue so that attendees, who skewed conspicuously white and old, could get off their feet as they waited to hear from NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre and former President Donald Trump.

There were some children waiting, too. One, a blond-haired toddler, played with a plastic key fob shaped as a semi-automatic rifle, which his mother had given him as a distraction. He dropped it to the ground, leading a short, gray-haired man in a Trump hat and American flag shirt to declare in mock surprise, “He’s got a gun!” The boy’s mother laughed, “What’s wrong with kids today!,” she said. “But you can’t joke, not with what’s happened.” She handed the fob to the boy, who put it in his mouth to teeth on.

As the line advanced, protesters became visible through a wall of glass that looked across the street, Avenida De Las Americas. The man in the Trump hat warned his neighbors to “never trust the federal government” and to be careful about those who — like the protestors — claim to be into peace. “They are the most terrifying people you ever want to meet,” he said. “And you cannot argue with them.”

Nearby, a man wore a shirt that declared: Alex Jones Was Right! (Jones fueled the conspiracy theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.)

Once inside the assembly hall, where firearms and other weapons were banned, a series of speakers that included LaPierre, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Trump followed a script the gun group has honed following mass shootings — in this instance the killing of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school three days earlier in Uvalde, Texas, less than 300 miles away. The speakers offered words of mourning, spoke of the shooter’s depravity, and insisted that stricter controls on firearms were an assault on liberty and had no role in preventing such bloodshed. .............(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/nra-convention-uvalde-shooting-gun-control-protesters.html

[thatdemguy]

1. The NRA is basically dead at this point.

They are on life support, look deeper than the news. The NRA needs to die, and it will in the next few years. Well it will remain but as a shell of its former self.

[maxrandb]

2. Kind of like the Retrumplican Party

Shrinking in size, expanding in power.

Of only there was something we could do about it...