Recent mass shootings in Lousisville and Nashville this month went completely ignored by DOnald Trump and the rest of the ammosexuals at this year's NRA Convention in nearby Indianapolis this weekend, because the solution to guns killing people in Gunmerica is always more guns!
Amid an advertised “14 acres of guns & gear” on display in Indianapolis, a phalanx of announced and unannounced 2024 GOP candidates paraded in front of rank-and-file members of the National Rifle Association’s leadership forum.
Pummeled by lawsuits and scandal in recent years, the NRA show went on this week in the shadow of a pair of mass shootings. In 2019, this event took place in the belly of the cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium. Now it’s reduced to a ballroom at the Indiana Convention Center and tiered ticket prices were dropped for free admission to fill out the room.
But the annual cattle call—which drew the likes of former President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, among others—stood out for its red-meat policy pitches on guns. (Former ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina all appeared by pre-recorded video messages.)
Even after recent mass shootings in Louisville and Nashville, none of the candidates staked out middle ground — thus shaping the contours of a familiar gun control debate ahead of 2024. Prior to the most recent shootings in Louisville and Nashville, a Gallup poll showed 63% of Americans are dissatisfied with gun laws.
You wouldn’t know it from listening to the speeches or the lusty applause they received inside the hall here this afternoon. The two parties seemed farther apart than ever on guns. Pence — who just four years ago came to Indianapolis and declared Indiana’s first-in-the-nation red flag law a possible national model to prevent mass shootings — made no mention of them from the stage. Instead, he called for expedited executions of perpetrators. Businessman and author Vivek Ramaswamy, who boasted about owning an AR-15 and received perhaps the warmest welcome of the crowd behind only Trump, called for the abolition of the FBI and ATF. Noem even went so far as to sign an executive order on stage, flanked by NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, putting an end to some banks’ recent efforts to stop lending to gun retailers and manufacturers.
And Trump, meanwhile, proposed reimbursing any teacher for the full cost of a concealed-carry firearm and training from highly qualified experts.
Elect Trump, the former president told the red hat-flecked crowd to close out the confab, “and no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”
“This is not a gun problem, this is a mental health problem, this is a social problem, this is a cultural problem, and this a spiritual problem,” Trump concluded, all but ending any prospect of gun control legislation among the GOP field ahead of 2024.
There will never be "moderation" in the Gunmerica Party. Stop pretending otherwise.
Until Republicans are voted out, nothing will happen.
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