Donald Trump scheduled to address NRA forum after Texas shooting

Miami, May 26 (RHC)-- Former U.S. President Donald Trump is set to speak in front of the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual convention in Texas on Friday, just days after 19 children and two teachers were killed in a school shooting in the state.

In a post on "Truth Social" – the social media network he launched after being banned on Twitter – Trump on Wednesday said that he plans to “deliver an important address to America."

The three-day convention is a major event for the U.S. gun lobby and is set to showcase “the latest guns and gear,” according to the event’s website.

It is scheduled to start three days after an 18-year-old killed 21 people at a Texas elementary school.  The shooting was the deadliest U.S. school shooting in a decade, and has reignited debate about gun laws.

The shooting in Texas also came as the nation reeled from a mass shooting earlier this month, when an avowed white supremacist shot 13 people at a supermarket in a mostly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, among others, are scheduled to speak at the NRA convention.  Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat challenging Abbott in the November elections, called on the governor not to attend the convention. O’Rourke later on Wednesday stood up and interrupted a news conference by Texas officials shouting: “You are doing nothing!”   People shouted O’Rourke down and security officials moved to escort him out of the room.

Speaking to reporters outside the news conference, O’Rourke said: “We owe those parents action.  They want us to do something right now.  I want us to do something right now.  We can do something right now.  But if we continue to accept this, then it is on us.  It’s not just the governor’s fault.  It is on us.”

In a tweet on Tuesday, Cruz said that he was “fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde.”   New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, mentioning his plan to attend the NRA event in Houston, Texas, shot back on Twitter saying, “Faith without works is dead.”