The 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting posed a challenge for the National Rifle Association (NRA). The nation was not yet accustomed to mass shootings in schools, and the NRA had to decide how to respond to public horror. Now NPR has obtained two and a half hours of recordings of internal NRA deliberations on how to proceed, deliberations that laid the groundwork for how the NRA would respond to every mass shooting since then. The NRA’s national convention was scheduled for just days after Columbine, and it was close by in Denver. The group’s leaders debated cancelling it, but ultimately went ahead, albeit with a scaled-down event. One exchange quoted by NPR lays out the core of the debate. Read more