6 Things the NRA Didn’t Blame for Mass Shootings

Video games and Hurricane Sandy made the list. Adam Lanza’s Bushmaster didn’t.


In this morning’s National Rifle Association (NRA) press conference, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre found a lot of things to blame for the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, many of them rehashed from the NRA’s past responses to mass shootings. Video games, the absence of armed policemen in schools, and pure evil made the list, as did Hurricane Sandy.

Here’s what LaPierre didn’t blame:

.223 BUSHMASTER SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULT RIFLE

The weapon used by Adam Lanza when he massacred 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, according to the medical examiner (December, 2012). 

 

.223-CALIBER SMITH & WESSON M&P15

One of the weapons used by James Holmes at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, that killed and injured a total of 70 people (July, 2012).

 

.40-CALIBER GLOCK

The weapon used by Jeffrey Weise, who murdered nine people and wounded five others on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota (March, 2005).

 

GLOCK 19 SEMI-AUTOMATIC PISTOL

One of the weapons used by Seung-Hui Cho, who injured and killed 56 people at the Virginia Tech campus (April, 2007).

 

7.62 mm AK-47 Chinese variant

The weapon used by former Caltrans employee Arturo Reyes Torres, who opened fire at a maintenance yard, killing five and injuring two.

 

INTRATEC TEC-9 PISTOL

One of the weapons used by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who opened fire in Columbine High School, injuring and killing 39 (April, 1999).
 

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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