NRA's LaPierre blames FBI, mental illness and security 'failures' for Florida shooting – not guns

The longtime head of the National Rifle Association denounced lawmakers and the media for seeking to “exploit” last week’s deadly mass shooting at a Florida high school.

“As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain,” Wayne LaPierre, NRA CEO and executive vice president, said in a politically charged speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md.

LaPierre, whose organization has opposed almost all gun-control measures in Congress and the states, decried the “breakback speed of calls for more gun control laws and the breathless national media eager to smear the NRA.”

He accused Democrats — including Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. — of trampling the rights of gun owners.

“They hate the NRA,” LaPierre said. “They hate the Second Amendment. They hate individual freedom.”

The “intellectual elites,” as LaPierre called them, “don’t care — not one whit — about America’s school system and schoolchildren.”

“If they truly cared, what they would do is protect them,” he said. “For them, it’s not a safety issue; it’s a political issue. They care more about control, and more of it. Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment and our firearms freedoms so that they can eradicate all individual freedoms.”

Source: Yahoo News