The Slatest

NRA’s First Tweet Since Oregon Is About Gun Safety for Kids

NRA young girl instructions
A young girl learns how to hold an airsoft gun during Youth Day at the NRA’s annual meeting in Houston on May 5, 2013.  

Photo by Adrees Latif/Reuters

The National Rifle Association’s official Twitter account didn’t post any messaages in the immediate wake of Thursday’s mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon—a massacre of the sort that happens quite frequently in the United States, which has, by far, more guns in circulation than any other country in the world.

Here’s how the NRA broke its silence Friday:

Although the issue is obviously somewhat beside the point of what we should do about malevolent adult psychopaths who can easily obtain guns in order to stage coordinated, murderous attacks on large groups of people, it happens that Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes wrote about the NRA’s positions on children and gun safety for Slate in 2014. Concluded the authors: “The overwhelming empirical evidence indicates that the presence of a gun makes children less safe; that programs such as Eddie Eagle are insufficient; and that measures the NRA and extreme gun advocates vehemently oppose, such as gun safes and smart guns, could dramatically reduce the death toll.”

See more of Slate’s coverage of the Oregon shooting.