Politico reports:

The protesters who raised their middle fingers and shouted “shame” outside the National Rifle Association’s big gathering here on Friday had assumed — like much of official Washington — that the timing of a school shooting three days earlier might somehow be problematic for the NRA.

For gun enthusiasts and the Republican politicians courting them, it was only more reason to come.

Here, amid acres of guns and tactical gear inside a cavernous convention hall, the proximate cause of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was not a rifle, but mental illness, shadowy forces of evil or, as one man in a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt put it, the “destruction of our children” by the teachings of the left.

In Uvalde, a makeshift memorial of white wooden crosses had gone up for the 19 children and two adults slain. But at the NRA meeting in Houston, less than 300 miles away, the shooting had been reduced to a sling stone in the broader culture wars. The slaughter, it was universally agreed, was a tragedy. But gun owners saw themselves as set upon, too.

The Second Amendment, former President Donald Trump said, was “totally under siege.” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said the “real goal” of many politicians on the left “is disarming America.” Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota who, like Cruz, may run for president in 2024, warned, “Now is not the time to cave to the woke culture.”

“It’s not a gun control problem. It’s a demon control problem,” said Joe Chambers, who had traveled to the conference from Porter, Texas.

His wife, Ana, gestured to the TV cameras and demonstrators outside: “This is all propaganda,” she said. “They’ll use anything to make us look bad.”

On Friday, as the NRA opened its Memorial Day weekend conference, Trump said that if he runs for president again in 2024 and wins, he will adopt a more militaristic approach to public safety, pledging to “crack down on violent crime like never before.”

But beyond that, the reaction by Republicans and the gun lobby to Uvalde followed traditional lines. They called for more spending on school security measures and mental health, while pointing to gun violence in heavily populated, liberal cities. In interview after interview, conference-goers volunteered the federal government’s $40 billion aid package to Ukraine as evidence that the government could afford to spend money hardening schools. [Continue reading…]