A fundraising event was organized by charity for National Rifle Association of Texas (NRA) in Hondo Texas. It was located about 40 miles from the Robb Elementary school shooting. canceledAfter the families of the victims demanded the cancellation of the fundraiser, the Hondo City Council agreed.
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 faceTo 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.
This would have been just months after an 18-year old shooter from Uvalde, Texas, stormed Robb Elementary School with his semiautomatic assault rifle and shot nineteen students and two teachers.
Uvalde family members of victims spoke up at a neighboring town’s city council meeting about a local NRA fundraiser that would be raffling off an AR-15….they were met with snickering and jeers
*The NRA is a terrorist organization pic.twitter.com/h8V2fVU5eA
— Wu-Tang Is For The Children (@WUTangKids) August 3, 2022
Numerous gun reform advocates came out in support of reforming guns just days after the shooting. calledOn the NRA to cancel its Houston convention. 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.
Planners of the event stressed this week that the fundraiser is not technically associated with the NRA and that it was months in the making.
“These events are planned months in advance with the goal of raising funds for local programs that promote safe and responsible gun ownership,” Lars Dalseide, a spokesperson for the NRA, told CNN. “Penalizing hundreds of volunteers and participants at the 11th hour for the crimes of a sick, evil criminal is misguided and wrong.”
Over the past 15 years, the fundraiser has been held every year. Event planners were expected conduct a gun raffle.
