Trump to Speak at NRA Forum Days After Mass Shooting

On Monday, a shooter killed five people with an AR-15 style rifle in a Louisville, Kentucky, bank. On Friday, Donald Trump and other Republican leaders will take the stage at a National Rifle Association leadership forum in Indiana, where they are likely to tout the role of guns in American life.

Mike Pence, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson are among the others speakers. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will deliver video addresses.

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The nation’s top Republicans flocking to pump up the NRA days after a mass shooting — and weeks after another at a school in Nashville left six dead, including three children — epitomizes the party’s stance toward semi-automatic death machines in the wake of people using them to slaughter Americans, which is that they’re good and we need more of them.

“Criminals love gun control because it keeps their victims defenseless,” the NRA tweeted on Tuesday, a day after the shooting in Louisville. The organization’s website notes that guns will not be permitted inside the forum on Friday, citing security concerns.

The forum on Friday won’t be the first time Trump has gone to bat for the NRA in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting. He spoke at the NRA’s annual convention in Houston last May, just days after a shooter killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, just 280 miles away. Trump bashed Democrats for “virtue cycling” over the shooting, argued schools should be transformed into “hardened” compounds, and then did a little dance onstage — literally.

The NRA prohibited members from carrying guns into that event, too, despite Trump, Republicans, and the organization itself repeatedly insisting they make any location — including schools — safer.

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