Secret Tapes Of NRA Leadership Reveal Debate Of Post-Columbine Strategy
Consider This from NPR
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4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 10 November 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Secret tapes of those deliberations were obtained by NPR investigative correspondent Tim Mak. He explains what's revealed in the tapes: that the group considered a much different stance than the one it ultimately took — a stance that would help set the stage for decades of debate about gun violence in America.
Tim Mak is also author of the book Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just a heads up here. |
| 0:02.0 | We're going to start this episode with some news reports from April 20, 1999, the day of the Columbine shooting. |
| 0:10.0 | Good day, John Roberts from CBS News headquarters in New York with an update now on that school shooting at the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. |
| 0:18.0 | That day, two teenagers walked into their high school, armed with semi-automatic weapons and sawed off shotguns. |
| 0:24.0 | They fired a total of 188 rounds of ammunition. |
| 0:28.0 | Who did you see with guns? |
| 0:30.0 | We saw these two kids. They were white and they had black trench coats on. |
| 0:38.0 | You saw two students with black trench coats on holding guns? |
| 0:42.0 | Yeah, they were shooting people on stuff. |
| 0:44.0 | One teacher and 12 students were killed. The two teenagers responsible took their own lives. |
| 0:50.0 | This tragedy is about an hour and a half old now. Apparently the SWAT team has mobilized outside of the school. |
| 0:56.0 | In the days that followed, while those images were still fresh on TV, leaders of the National Rifle Association huddled in private. |
| 1:04.0 | They were Craig and the Mary were just showing me the hate mail that's coming into the building. |
| 1:10.0 | I don't know how much it is, but I got a stack here. It's pretty nasty. About 50 or 60. |
| 1:18.0 | This is a recording that has never been heard before. |
| 1:22.0 | NPR has obtained more than two and a half hours of tapes like it, where you can hear NRA officials debating their public response to Columbine. |
| 1:30.0 | The issue they grappled with, whether to move forward with their annual meeting, a massive and expensive conference scheduled only days later in Denver, just half an hour's drive from Columbine High School. |
| 1:42.0 | Here's the NRA's top official Wain La Pierre and lobbyist, Mary and Hammer. |
| 1:48.0 | We have meeting insurance. I just screw the insurance. The message that it will send is that even the NRA was brought to its knees and the media will have a field day with it. |
| 2:04.0 | Consider this. The NRA's response to Columbine helped set the stage for the next 20 years of debate about gun violence in America. |
| 2:12.0 | Now secret tapes reveal the group considered a much different stance than the one it ultimately took. |
| 2:20.0 | For NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Wednesday, November 10. |
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