Recorded calls show that several of the NRA's lobbyists were worried that the Columbine shooting would create a massive crisis for the gun rights organization and its agenda.
In the wake of what had been one the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, the NRA's senior leaders—including lobbyist Marion Hammer and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre—held a conference call to discuss whether they would still hold the organization's annual convention in Denver.
"If you pull down the exhibit hall, that's not going to leave anything for the media except the members meeting, and you're going to have the wackos... with all kinds of crazy resolutions, with all kinds of, of dressing like a bunch of hillbillies and idiots. And, and it's gonna, it's gonna be the worst thing you can imagine," Hammer is heard saying on the tapes.
"At that same period where they're going to be burying these children, we're going to be having media... trying to run through the exhibit hall, looking at kids fondling firearms, which is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible juxtaposition," lobbyist Jim Baker can be heard saying. "What we're trying to avoid here, I think, is what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing," public relations adviser Angus McQueen says on the recordings."When we lost control of a situation and the result was a half a million members, the president of the United States bailing out on us and a firestorm of negative media that if you went back and looked at, it was probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars in opposition to us and our point of view.
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