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Charlton Heston, then-President of the National Rifle Association (NRA), (left) meets with fellow NRA leaders Wayne LaPierre (far right) and Jim Baker (center) before the NRA’s annual meeting in Denver on April 30, 1999. Around the same time, leaders discussed how to respond to the shooting at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo. More than 20 years later, NPR obtained secret recordings of those conversations.
Kevin Moloney/Getty
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Kevin Moloney/Getty
Charlton Heston, then-President of the National Rifle Association (NRA), (left) meets with fellow NRA leaders Wayne LaPierre (far right) and Jim Baker (center) before the NRA’s annual meeting in Denver on April 30, 1999. Around the same time, leaders discussed how to respond to the shooting at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo. More than 20 years later, NPR obtained secret recordings of those conversations.
Kevin Moloney/Getty
Note: This issue of Up First was originally published on 2021.
On Tuesday, a gunman killed 19 students and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The National Rifle Association will hold its annual convention in Houston, Texas, just a few hundred miles away on Friday. President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak In the event.
The moment was eerily similar to what happened more than two decades ago, when the NRA’s annual event was about to begin in Denver, just days after two gunmen killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The day after that horrific school shooting in 1999, NRA leaders gathered to plan their response. NPR’s Tim Mak obtained secret recordings of their discussions about how to respond and whether to hold their annual meeting. The NRA’s decision then would become the organization’s standard response to school shootings for decades to come.
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