General Discussion

Budi

(15,325 posts) Sat May 28, 2022, 10:37 AM May 2022

NRA's annual meeting in Denver, just 10 days after the 1999 Columbine shooting/NPR

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1049054141/a-secret-tape-made-after-columbine-shows-the-nras-evolution-on-school-shootings

A secret tape made after Columbine shows the NRA's evolution on school shootings
November 9, 2021

NPR has obtained more than 2 1/2 hours of recordings of those private meetings after the Columbine shooting, which offer unique insight into the NRA's deliberations in the wake of this crisis — and how it has struggled to develop what has become its standard response to school shootings ever since.

Soon after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, senior leaders of the National Rifle Association huddled on a conference call to consider canceling their annual convention, scheduled just days later and a few miles away.

Thirteen people lay dead at a high school in Colorado. More than 20 were injured. Images of students running from the school were looped on TV. The NRA strategists on the call sounded shaken and panicked as they pondered their next step into what would become an era of routine and horrific mass school shootings.

And in those private moments, the NRA considered a strikingly more sympathetic posture toward mass shootings than the uncompromising stance it has taken publicly in the decades since, even considering a $1 million fund to care for the victims.
MORE..

EXCELLENT READ.

1999, Columbine
*Members of Congress, one participant says, have asked the NRA to "secretly provide them with talking points."

*Fruitcakes & Hillbillies

*We are in deep s*** on this deal. .
NRA discussing jow to properly PR their upcoming NRA Convention, scheduled just weeks after the deadly Columbine HS massacre in Littleton CO.

SNIP
The Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colo., was at the time the deadliest school shooting since the late 1960s, threatening to provide a tragic backdrop to the NRA's previously scheduled annual convention in Denver. Billboards advertising a "World Class Guns & Gear Expo" already peppered the city. Meanwhile, hate mail began arriving at the NRA's offices.

WORLD CLASS GUNS & GEAR EXPO

A school bus in 1999 passes a billboard advertising the NRA's annual meeting in Denver, previously scheduled to take place just 10 days after the shooting at Columbine High School.