One by one, they took the stage at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Houston and denounced the massacre of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school across the state. And one by one, they insisted that further restricting access to firearms was not the answer to preventing future tragedies. “The existence of evil in our world is not a reason to disarm law-abiding citizens,” said former President Donald Trump, who was among the Republicans who lined up to speak before the gun rights lobbying group Friday as thousands of protesters angry about gun violence demonstrated outside. “The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens,” he said. The gathering came just three days after the shooting in Uvalde and as the nation grappled with revelations that students trapped inside a classroom with the gunman repeatedly called 911 during the attack — one pleading “Please send the police now” — as officers waited in the hallway for more than 45 minutes. The NRA had said that convention attendees would “reflect on” the shooting at the event and “pray for the victims, recognize our patriotic members and pledge to redouble our commitment to making our schools secure.” The meeting was the first for the troubled organization since 2019, following a two-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization has been trying to regroup following a period of serious legal and financial turmoil that included a failed bankruptcy effort, a class-action lawsuit and a fraud investigation by New York’s attorney general. Once among the most powerful political organizations in the country, the NRA has seen its influence wane following a significant drop in political spending.  Also Read: Texas elementary school shooting: What do we know so far? Wayne LaPierre, the group’s embattled chief executive, opened the program with remarks bemoaning the “21 beautiful lives ruthlessly and indiscriminately extinguished by a criminal monster.” Still, he said that “restricting the fundamental human rights of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves is not the answer. It never has been.” Later, several hundred people in the auditorium stood and bowed their heads in a moment of silence for the victims of the shooting. Several thousand people were inside the auditorium during the speeches, which appeared fewer than the number gathered outside. Many seats were empty. Trump accused Democrats of trying to exploit the tragedy and demonizing gun owners. “When Joe Biden blamed the gun lobby he was talking about Americans like you,” Trump said, referring to the president’s emotional plea in a national address asking, “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Also Read: 'Horrifying' conspiracy theories swirl around Texas shooting Trump called for overhauling school security and the nation’s approach to mental health, telling the group every school building should have a single point of entry, strong exterior fencing, metal detectors and hardened classroom doors and every school should have a police officer or armed guard on duty at all times. He also called yet again for trained teachers to be able to carry concealed weapons in the classroom. He and other speakers overlooked the security upgrades that were already in place at the elementary school and did not stop the gunman, who entered the building through a back door that had been propped open. According to a district safety plan, Uvalde schools have a wide range of safety measures in place. The district had four police officers and four support counselors, according to the plan, which appears to be dated from the 2019-20 school year. It also had software to monitor social media for threats and software to screen school visitors. Security experts say the Uvalde case illustrates how fortifying schools can backfire. A lock on the classroom door, for instance — one of the most basic and widely recommended school safety measures — kept victims in and police out. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who, like Trump, is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2024, railed against Democrats’ calls for universal background checks for gun purchases and bans of assault-style weapons and instead pointed to broken families, declining church attendance, social media bullying and video games as the real problems. “Tragedies like the event of this week are a mirror forcing us to ask hard questions, demanding that we see where our culture is failing,” he said. “We must not react to evil and tragedy by abandoning the Constitution or infringing on the rights of our law-abiding citizens.” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another potential presidential contender, said calls to further restrict gun access are “all about control and it is garbage. I’m not buying it for a second and you shouldn’t, either.” Some scheduled speakers and performers backed out of the event, including several Texas lawmakers and “American Pie” singer Don McLean, who said “it would be disrespectful” to go ahead with his act after the country’s latest mass shooting. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Friday morning that he had decided not to speak at an event breakfast after “prayerful consideration and discussion with NRA officials.” “While a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and an NRA member, I would not want my appearance today to bring any additional pain or grief to the families and all those suffering in Uvalde,” he wrote in a statement. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who was to attend, addressed the convention by prerecorded video instead. Outside the convention hall, protesters gathered in a park where police set up metal barriers — some holding crosses with photos of the Uvalde shooting victims. “Murderers!” some yelled in Spanish. “Shame on you!” others shouted at attendees. Among the protesters was singer Little Joe, of the popular Tejano band Little Joe y La Familia, who said in the more than 60 years he’s spent touring the world, no other country he’s been to has faced as many mass shootings as the U.S. “Of course, this is the best country in the world,” he said. “But what good does it do us if we can’t protect lives, especially of our children?” Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is challenging Abbott in the governor’s race, ticked off a list of previous school shootings and called on those attending the convention to “join us to make sure that this no longer happens in this country.” While Biden and Democrats in Congress have renewed calls for stricter gun laws after the Uvalde shooting, NRA board members and others attending the conference dismissed talk of banning or limiting access to firearms. Samuel Thornburg, 43, a maintenance worker for Southwest Airlines in Houston who was attending the NRA meeting, said: “Guns are not evil. It’s the people that are committing the crime that are evil. Our schools need to be more locked. There need to be more guards.” There is precedent for the NRA to gather during local mourning and controversy. The organization went ahead with a shortened version of its 1999 meeting in Denver roughly a week after the deadly shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. Texas has experienced a series of mass shootings in recent years. During that time, the Republican-led Legislature and governor have relaxed gun laws. Most U.S. adults think that mass shootings would occur less often if guns were harder to get and believe schools and other public places have become less safe than they were two decades ago, polling finds. Many specific measures that would curb access to guns or ammunition also get majority support. A May AP-NORC poll found, for instance, that 51% of U.S. adults favor a nationwide ban on the sale of AR-15 rifles and similar semiautomatic weapons. But the numbers are highly partisan, with 75% percent of Democrats agreeing versus just 27% of Republicans. Though personal firearms are allowed at the convention, guns were not permitted during the session featuring Trump because of Secret Service security protocols.

Once again, one of America’s deadliest mass shootings happened in Texas. Past shootings targeted worshippers during a Sunday sermon, shoppers at a Walmart, students on a high school campus and drivers on a highway. Among the latest victims were 19 children in the small town of Uvalde, west of San Antonio, where on Tuesday a gunman opened fire inside an elementary school in the nation’s deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. Each of those tragedies in Texas — which resulted in more than 85 dead in all — occurred in the last five years. But as the horror in Uvalde plunges the U.S. into another debate over gun violence, Texas and the state’s Republican-controlled government have by now demonstrated what is likely to happen next: virtually nothing that would restrict gun access. Also read: Biden says ‘we have to act’ after Texas school shooting Lawmakers are unlikely to adopt any significant new limits on guns. Last year, gun laws were actually loosened after a gunman at a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist 2019 attack that targeted Hispanics. “I can’t wrap my head around it,” said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde. “It’s disturbing to me as a policymaker that we have been able to do little other than create greater access to these militarized weapons to just about anyone who would want them.” Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott identified the gunman as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. Two other adults also died in the attack. The gunman was killed by authorities. The cycle in Texas — a mass shooting followed by few if any new restrictions on guns — mirrors GOP efforts to block stricter laws in Congress and the ensuring outrage from Democrats and supporters of tougher gun control. President Joe Biden angrily made a renewed push Tuesday evening after the tragedy in Uvalde. “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” he asked in an address from the White House. The shooting in Texas happened days before the National Rifle Association is set to hold its annual meeting in Houston, where Abbott and other Republican leaders are scheduled to speak. Even as Biden’s party has slim control of Congress, gun violence bills have stalled in the face of Republican opposition in the Senate. Last year, the House passed two bills to expand background checks on firearms purchases, but both languished in the 50-50 Senate where Democrats need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome objections from a filibuster. “It sort of centers around the issue of mental health. It seems like there’s consensus in that area,” No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Thune said about how Congress should respond to the Uvalde shooting. He did not specify what that would be. In Texas, any changes to gun access would not come until lawmakers return to the Capitol in 2023. In the past, calls for action have faded. Abbott, who is up for reelection in November, said the shooting in Uvalde was carried out “horrifically, incomprehensibly” on children. He did not immediately say how or whether Texas would respond to this latest mass shooting on a policy level, but since he became governor in 2015, the state has only gotten more relaxed when it comes to gun laws. Also read: Gunman kills at least 18 children at Texas elementary school Exactly one year before the Uvalde shooting, the GOP-controlled Legislature voted to remove one of the last major gun restrictions in Texas: required licenses, background checks and training for the nearly 1.6 million registered handgun owners in the state at the time. Abbott signed the measure, which came at the end of what was the Texas Legislature’s first chance to act after the Walmart attack. A year later, a man went on a highway shooting rampage in the West Texas oil patch that left seven people dead, spraying bullets into passing cars and shopping plazas and killing a U.S. Postal Service employee while hijacking her mail truck. Following a shooting at Santa Fe High School in 2018 that killed 10 people near Houston, Abbott signaled support for so-called red flag laws, which restrict gun access for people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. But he later retreated amid pushback from gun-rights supporters. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who won the GOP nomination for a third term Tuesday, told Fox News after the Uvalde shooting that the best response would be training teachers and “hardening” schools. Democrat state Rep. Joe Moody recalled the hope he felt that the Walmart shooting in his border city might finally lead to reforms. “And the only answer you get when we go to the Capitol is, ‘More guns, less restrictions,‘” Moody said. “That’s it.’”