Top 2024 hopefuls to address NRA convention in Indianapolis

Indiana Convention Center (IBJ file photo)

Last year it was Uvalde. Now it’s Nashville and Louisville. For the second year in a row, the National Rifle Association is holding its annual convention within days of mass shootings that shook the nation.

The three-day gathering, beginning Friday, will include thousands of the organization’s most active members at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis and is attracting a bevy of top Republican presidential candidates—enough that it could help shape the early part of next year’s GOP primary race.

It illustrates the stark reality that such shootings have become enough of the fabric of American life that the NRA can no longer schedule around them. Nor do they really want to: The convention falls on the second anniversary of the mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis that resulted in nine deaths.

The NRA calls the convention “one of the most politically significant and popular events in the country, featuring our nation’s top Second Amendment leaders.” Republican Indiana state Rep. Ben Smaltz said that he appreciated the organization bringing its convention to Indianapolis for the third time in the past decade, and that he thought strong support for gun rights would be a key for any Republican seeking to win the party’s presidential nomination.

“To Republicans, the Second Amendment is very important,” said Smaltz, who was the lead sponsor last year of repealing Indiana’s requirement for a permit to carry a handgun in public. “To me, personally, it is, to the history of our country, it is important to talk about.”

Former President Donald Trump will be speaking at the gathering, his first public appearance since being arrested and arraigned in New York last week on felony charges stemming from hush money payments made to a porn actor during his 2016 campaign.

His Secret Service protection means attendees can’t have guns at the convention.

Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, is also speaking as he considers his own 2024 White House bid. It will be the first time the pair has addressed the same campaign event on the same day since their estrangement following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Two GOP Trump critics — former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who announced his 2024 campaign after news of the former president’s indictment broke, and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who may launch his own White House bid—will also speak.

Offering video messages are former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who began her 2024 campaign in February; South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who announced a presidential exploratory committee this week; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a top rival to Trump even though he’s yet to jump into the race.

The convention follows shootings at a Louisville bank that killed five people this week and at a Christian school in Nashville on March 27 that killed three 9-year-old students and three staff members.

Pain over both shooting rampages has crossed party lines. Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear talked about having a friend killed in the Louisville shooting, while Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he had friends killed during the Nashville school attack.

The NRA convention’s tone is nonetheless likely to be as defiant as last year, when the group held its convention in Houston just three days after the massacre of 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school across Texas in the town of Uvalde.

Further overlapping with recent tragedy, Pence and some of the other speakers plan to follow up their NRA speeches by traveling to Nashville to meet with top GOP donors gathered there.

“Every significant national Republican, every Republican that’s thrown their hat in the ring to run for president, is showing up this weekend to pledge their undying loyalty to the NRA and the gun lobby,” said Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who championed bipartisan legislation that passed last year and imposed some new federal gun restrictions after the Uvalde shootings. “Our kids are being hunted and the NRA’s business model is to give aid to the hunters.”

Democratic National Committee Chair Jamie Harrison added, “Republicans are committed to their annual pilgrimage to the NRA convention. It’s shameless.”

Indeed, support for gun rights among Republican voters remains higher than for voters overall. Some 56% of voters in last fall’s midterm elections said they want to see stricter nationwide gun laws, compared with just 28% of Republicans, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of the electorate.

About half of Republicans said gun laws should be left as they are.

Also on display Friday will be the resurgence of the NRA and the key role it is poised to play in next year’s presidential race—in a stark departure from 2020. Back then, the organization was trying to regroup and saw its membership and political spending decline following serious legal and financial turmoil—including a failed bankruptcy effort, a class-action lawsuit and a fraud investigation.

Trump, meanwhile, has a contradictory history on guns. The NRA was a key backer of his 2016 campaign, spending some $30 million to support a candidate who sometimes mentioned carrying his own gun and vowed to eliminate gun-free zones in schools and on military bases. Trump also pledged to establish a national right to carry.

But, as the country reeled from a series of mass shootings, Trump’s administration banned bump stocks, which were used in a 2017 attack on a Las Vegas country music concert that killed 60 people. After the Parkland school shooting in Florida the following year, Trump urged congressional Republicans to expand background checks and proposed seizing guns from mentally ill people.

He also suggested raising the minimum age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21, and suggested he was open to a conversation about reviving assault weapon bans. After later meeting with the NRA, however, Trump abandoned his push, instead focusing on arming teachers and making schools more secure.

Gun rights advocates continue to celebrate a Supreme Court decision last June that said Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. That opened the door to a wave of challenges to firearm restrictions across the country by changing the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions.

Amid upheaval in the wake of the ruling, courts have declared unconstitutional laws including federal measures designed to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and defendants under felony indictment, as well as a ban on possessing guns with the serial number removed. Courts are also considering challenges to state bans on AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles.

Attempting to counter gun rights advocates has been an ascendant gun safety movement that has poured tens of millions of dollars into political campaigns. That includes Moms Demand Action which was among a coalition of groups that derided Friday’s speeches as “a cattle call of far-right” presidential candidates.