About 80,000 NRA members are expected to visit Dallas this weekend for the gun group’s national convention. Many of them got here early this morning, if the lines of goateed middle-aged men in ball caps paying for parking downtown were any indication.
Also arriving this morning are plenty of protesters, some of them with signage to match the posters of a stern-looking NRA President Wayne LaPierre, promising a “show of strength” and presently glaring from the facade of the convention center. Everytown, the gun control advocacy group, has its name attached to this mobile billboard seen this morning on Lamar Street.
Visto a las afueras del centro de convenciones de Dallas, donde la NRA realiza su encuentro anual y el presidente Trump encabeza la lista de ponentes. pic.twitter.com/nsJid0hOit
— Ana Elena Azpurua (@anaeazpurua) May 4, 2018
The billboard shows the faces of LaPierre and Russian leader Vladimir Putin surrounding the question, in Russian and English, “Why have you [the NRA] cozied up to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin?” The billboard, which is apparently one of four that will be circling the convention all weekend, is a reference to the gun group’s links to a Putin-connected Russian oligarch named Alexander Torshin. (An ammo distributor linked to another sanctioned Russian oligarch will be at the convention.)
Also up late last night and early this morning, activists from the North Texas Light Brigade projected this message on the convention center on Lamar Street.
President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Gov. Greg Abbott, and Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn will provide an unironic welcome to NRA members in Dallas this afternoon.
