MONDAY TOP NEWS LINKS:
Gregory Korte, USA Today
HOUSTON — The board of the National Rifle Association will elect as its president Monday a hard-line culture warrior who has worked for decades to make the NRA a more aggressive political force.
The election of James Porter — ensured after the endorsement of outgoing President David Keene last week — is one of many defiant signals to come out of the NRA’s annual meeting in Houston over the weekend. The organization vowed to continue to fight any compromise on gun-control legislation in Congress.
“Revenge is what’s motivating the president’s unrelenting attacks on gun owners today,” Porter told the group’s meeting Saturday amid news that the NRA’s membership had grown to a record 5 million.
“Millions of Americans are becoming first-time gun owners,” Porter said. “The media calls it fear. That’s not it. It’s a sense of natural outrage that’s been building for quite some time.”
Porter, 64, a lawyer from Birmingham, Ala., who defends gun manufacturers, has been building that outrage his whole life. His father, Irvine C. Porter, was president of the NRA in 1959 — when the son says the NRA was “a glorified shooting society.” At a breakfast Friday, Porter told grass-roots organizers that they are on the front line of a “culture war.”
“He seems to come out of a mold that’s much closer to the base than David Keene,” said Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Whereas Keene was a “steady hand” for the NRA amid controversy, Porter is “a complete wild card,” Horwitz said. “The world’s changing around them, and they’re hunkering down.”
[…] Observers said the tone of the convention wasn’t surprising, given the debate over universal background checks in Congress, which the NRA has fought bitterly. “The rhetoric has been ramped up,” said Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center. “They’ve doubled down on their absolutism.”
(Read more of the story at USA Today)
OTHER COVERAGE:
• Focus as NRA meeting wraps up: Child safety (Chron.com)
• NRA convention inspires lively social commentary (Chron.com)
• National Rifle Association convention in Houston draws thousands (KTRK 13 News)
• NRA Convention Gun Advocates Include Victims, Immigrants, Kids (Daily Beast)
• The NRA Convention Is Packed with Heat, Dip, and Sore Winners (The Atlantic)
LOCAL AREA HEADLINES:
- Harris Co. deputy constables wait tables to raise money for Special Olympics (KTRK 13 News)
- Lupus Awareness Month Comes to Houston (KIAH 39 Newsfix)
- Holocaust Museum Houston brings in $1.1 million at LBJ Moral Courage Award dinner (Houston Culture Map)
- Coast Guard rescues unconscious deckhand from crew boat in Gulf of Mexico (KTRK 13 News)
- Southern agents are busier than ever with illegal immigrants (KRIV 26 News)
STATE HEADLINES:
- Texas has much at stake in voting rights ruling (Chron.com)
- Ammonium nitrate storage locations in Texas (Chron.com)
- House Votes to Keep Schools Dealing with Businesses (Texas Tribune)
- For Fire Departments, More to State Budget Than Numbers (Texas Tribune)
- Bill Would Give Foster Kids a Say in Medication Use (Texas Tribune)