SEATTLE, WA – Just days after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX that left 19 young children and two adults dead, the NRA is holding its annual meeting less than 300 miles away in Houston. Texas leaders, including Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Patrick, and Senator Cruz are scheduled to attend. Alliance for Gun Responsibility CEO Renée Hopkins issued the following statement in response:

“Today, the NRA is holding its annual meeting just a few hundred miles from Robb Elementary School, where 19 young children and two teachers were gunned down in their classroom on Tuesday. 

This glaring juxtaposition is horrifyingly fitting. In the last two weeks, we have been forced to confront, in the most devastating ways, the country that the NRA and cowardly elected officials have created. A country where children are murdered in their classrooms, where parents, grandparents, friends, and neighbors are killed by a white supremacist at their local grocery store, where churchgoers are shot during a service because of their ethnicity. 

The gun lobby has spent decades fomenting racism, hate, and fear in its pursuit of profit and power. But it has not created this grim reality alone. Every elected leader, Republican and Democrat alike, who has refused to stand up to the gun lobby and act has blood on their hands too. 

In Washington, we’ve proven that the NRA’s stranglehold can be broken. We have beat them at the ballot box and in the legislature, passing dozens of lifesaving bills and electing gun responsibility majorities. We’ve beat them here and we will beat them in the other Washington too. We refuse to allow our country to be held hostage by the gun lobby any longer. We refuse to accept empty platitudes and political excuses. We refuse to keep burying our children.”  

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