by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
It was the second largest turnout in National Rifle Association history as 78,865 people attended the organization’s 144th annual meetings and exhibits in Nashville, where Allan D. Cors of Florida was elected president of the association, succeeding James Porter.
It was, according to the Baltimore Sun, the largest convention ever held at the Music City Center.
Pete Brownell was elected to the post of first vice president and Richard Childress was elected second vice president.
Once again, Wayne LaPierre was elected to the post of executive vice president, and he re-appointed Chris Cox to head the Institute for Legislative Action, and Kyle Weaver as executive director of general operations.
John Frazer was elected to the post of secretary, succeeding longtime secretary Edward J. “Jim” Land, the retired Marine Corps major who founded the modern Marine sniper course.
The three-day event was not without controversy. A report in one newspaper lead to a misunderstanding, fueled by bogus assertions in the Internet, that firearms were banned by the association from the event. That was quickly disproven by countless numbers of people who showed up armed. During one event, Cox even alluded to the armed citizens in the audience, and throughout the three-day convention, open carriers could be spotted making their way around the exhibit hall floor.
A relatively small contingent of anti-gun demonstrators led by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America—the Michael Bloomberg-supported group aligned with his Everytown for Gun Safety lobbying organization—staged a protest at a riverside park a couple of blocks from the Music City convention center. Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, and Richard Martinez, whose son was murdered last year in the Santa Barbara spree killing, led the protest.
NRA business got off to a fast start with the annual Leadership Conference that provided an opportunity for several possible Republican presidential candidates, including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Donald Trump. Not in attendance was Rand Paul, and that absence provided another opportunity for controversy as it was suggested that his association with the National Association for Gun Rights somehow got him dissed. The NRA reportedly could not “accommodate” Paul, but the stories all say Paul’s association with NAGR, their use of his image on fund raisers and his involvement in a telemarketing fund raising effort last year was at the root of the controversy.
But the entire event got a boost with the announcement by Hillary Clinton that she is making another bid for the White House. She was the focus of criticism from the opening speeches to the closing bell, with LaPierre and Cox both hammering her possible presidency as a threat to the Second Amendment.
During his remarks at the Leadership Forum, LaPierre asked the audience if Mrs. Clinton is “really who you want to be our first woman president?” The crowd answered with a resounding “No!”
LaPierre predicted that a second Clinton presidency “will not bring the dawn of new promise and opportunity.” Instead, he suggested, she will plunge the nation into “a permanent darkness of deceit and despair.”
After rattling off a list of scandals in which she’s been involved, from “Travelgate” to Benghazi, LaPierre observed brutally, “Hillary Clinton has more gates than a south Texas cattle ranch.”
At the annual members’ meeting, which had a larger turnout than has been seen in the past few years, LaPierre continued his criticism.
“Eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough,” he said, as the audience of about 3,000 erupted in cheers and applause. “Eight years of the Obama-Clinton regime has sent our nation into a tailspin of moral decay, deceit and destruction.”
He also took a swipe at political and media dishonesty during his report to the members meeting. LaPierre disdained politicians in general, attacked the “epidemic of dishonesty” in government and chastised the national press for helping perpetuate it. He contrasted this with what he portrayed as a tradition of honesty held dear by American citizens.
“The dishonesty in the air, my gosh, is so thick,” he said, “it’s becoming hard for normal Americans to breathe. Our greatest vulnerability is a national news media in this country that fails to tell the truth.”
He accused politicians and the media of hating the NRA because the organization tells the truth. And he said the next 650 days—the remainder of President Barack Obama’s time in office—will be dangerous to the Second Amendment “and our personal freedom.”
LaPierre warned his audience that Obama is already planning for Clinton’s “coronation.”
The convention provided a backdrop for other discussions, including a lively debate on PBS between Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
Gottlieb said the mid-term elections resulted in gains for gunowners. He also bashed the current push by anti-gunners of so-called “universal background check” measures that—like Initiative 594 passed in November in Washington state—are actually handgun registration schemes.
“The problem is how the bills are written,” Gottlieb said, “when they end up registering gunowners, and creating gun registries and making it impossible to loan a firearm to a friend or your secretary overnight to protect herself when she has a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend.
“Those are the kinds of laws that hurt gun owners,” he explained. “And we can’t support them. You give us legitimate background check bills, we can support those. The problem is, the ones being proposed have a lot of baggage in them. The devil is always in the details.”
Next year’s annual meetings and exhibits will be held in Louisville, KY, in May.
