Charlie Scudder reports from Houston…
By noon on Friday, several hundred people protesting for stricter gun control had gathered across the street from the main entrance of the George R Brown Convention Center, where the NRA is holding its annual meeting.
Some groups, like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and the local Democratic party, set up booths to pass out signs and water and register voters. Many more people gathered in a scrum directly across from the convention hall, shouting into megaphones with chants like “Not one more” and “Vote them out”.
One group, holding wooden crosses for each Uvalde victim and wheeling a child-sized coffin, split off from the main group to march around a large city park.
They shouted: “Protect our kids, not guns.”
Among those who gathered was 73-year-old Nancy Harris. She carried in her pocket a handwritten list of 12 names, all people she knew who died from gun violence. Her daughter’s name was among them.
“I drove here from Fort Worth to tell these assholes to stop,” Harris said, her voice halting.
She said she didn’t know one the NRA was meeting in Houston until after the shooting in Uvalde. She stayed up for two nights, she said, hearing people say Americans needed to do something and wondering what she could do herself.
Asked why she had driven the four hours to protest the convention, she laughed.
“How many more of these do you intend to report on?” she told the Guardian. “How many more need to happen? … All I want is reasonable gun control. Reasonable background checks and eliminating military style weapons.”
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