14. apr. 2023 23:01 – Updated Apr 14 2023 23:02
Former Vice President Mike Pence was met with boos when he arrived at the annual meeting of the powerful lobbying organization National Rifle Association on Friday.
The NRA’s three-day annual meeting is being held this year in Indianapolis. Several leading Republicans who hope to become the party’s presidential candidate will participate during the weekend, including former President Donald Trump.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is considering running against Trump, was met with boos when he entered the podium on Friday. He tried to brush that off.
– I love you too, he said, before lashing out at liberals who demand stricter gun laws in the US.
In the speech, Pence also called for the federal death penalty and execution within months, not years, for anyone behind mass shootings in the United States.
He did not receive much applause for this either from the audience, where many were wearing T-shirts with a picture of Trump and red Make America Great Again caps.
Masseskyting
This year’s NRA annual meeting is being held just days after five people were shot and killed in a Louisville bank, and a few weeks after three nine-year-old students and three teachers were killed in Nashville.
The annual meeting also coincides with the second anniversary of the mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis that killed nine people.
However, such mass shootings have never made the NRA agree to stricter gun laws, quite the opposite.
Pence and Haley
The participants at this year’s meeting in Indianapolis are quite rightly not allowed to carry weapons when Trump is present, which is probably hard to swallow for several of them.
Among this year’s speakers are also former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who started the election campaign all the way back in February, senator Tim Scott from South Carolina and not least Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who many see as Trump’s main rival in the party.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who are both critics of Trump, are also vying to become the presidential candidate and are running at the NRA annual meeting.
School massacre
Last year’s annual meeting was held in Houston, Texas, just three days after the massacre of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde in the same state, without this apparently weakening the participants’ demands for the right to own and bear arms.
Opinion polls have shown that 56 percent of voters want stricter gun laws in the United States, but the share among Republican voters is only 28 percent.
– Shameful
– Every leading Republican, every Republican who hopes to be the party’s presidential candidate, is showing up this weekend to swear allegiance to the NRA and the gun lobby, states Democrat Chris Murphy, who is a senator from Connecticut.
He is among those who have fought for stricter gun laws after the school massacre in Uvalde.
– Our children are being hunted, and the NRA’s business model is to help the hunters, he says.
The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Jamie Harrison, also has little left for Republicans who flock to the NRA.
– The Republicans are now making their annual pilgrimage to the NRA annual meeting, it is shameful, he says.
