National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday to defend his organization one week after a gunman used an assault-style rifle to kill 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida. LaPierre’s message, in short: A lot of things are to blame for school shootings, but guns aren’t among them. The speech did not appear on the conference’s official schedule as a precaution in the aftermath of last week’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the Washington Examiner reports. But the NRA chief always intended to speak at CPAC ― as he has for each of the last 10 years. LaPierre attacked imaginary evils rather than defend his group’s hard-line policies, at one point accusing Democrats of wanting to “eradicate all individual freedoms.”

Source: Huffington Post February 22, 2018 18:33 UTC