A fundraising event planned by charity for National Rifle Association (NRA) in Hondo Texas, some 40 miles away from the Robb Elementary School shooting, was canceled after relatives of the victims demanded that the Hondo City Council nix the fundraiser.
The Hondo City Council voted 4-to-1 on Monday to deny Friends of the NRA, the foundation that planned the fundraiser, a space for the event in the city’s Medina Fair Hall after relatives protested the affair.
“It is a slap in the face to all of Uvalde, especially the ones that lost a loved one, some of us being here today. What’s an even harder slap in the face is the AR-15 you get if you donate $5,000 to the NRA,” Jazmin Cazares, whose sister died in the Uvalde massacre, told CNN. “What you guys decide to do next with this NRA meeting either proves me right or proves me wrong about how I feel about Hondo.
“Us as parents deserve better than this. I mean, you can’t sit here and try to sell a rifle strikingly similar to the one that killed our children, you know, less than 60 days after they passed away,” Angel Garza, the stepfather of a child who was killed in the massacre, echoed to a CBS affiliate.
The event would have taken place just months after an 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde, Texas stormed the Robb Elementary School with a semiautomatic assault rifle, gunning down nineteen students and two teachers.
Just days after the shooting, numerous gun reform advocates called on the NRA to cancel its convention in Houston. However, the group refused to do so, allowing thousands of attendees, along with numerous conservative lawmakers, to sell pro-gun paraphernalia and parrot talking points about the importance of preserving the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.
Outraged Uvalde Residents Rise Up Against Local Fundraiser for NRA (truthout.org)