The armed head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, feared for his safety after mass shootings over the past few years, which forced him to hide on board a friend’s luxury yacht, the gun rights lawyer testified.
LaPierre made the recognition in a deposit related to the NRA’s bankruptcy case in Dallas.
“They simply allowed me to use it as a place of safety because they knew what threat I was facing. And I was basically under presidential threat without presidential security in terms of the number of threats I get,” LaPierre said.
“And all of us struggled with how we could handle the kind of situation with a private citizen with the amount of threat we had. And it was the only place I hoped could feel safe, where I remember getting there. “Thank God I’m safe, no one can find me here.” And that’s how it happened. That’s why I used it. “
LaPierre was asked why he did not pay the owner of the yacht, Hollywood producer Stanton McKenzie, for its use or mention it in conflicts of interest.
“I actually thought that given the security threat I was experiencing and the fact that the NRA was – almost lost on how to protect someone with the amount of threat I had, that – that my job and the threat that came with it ‘It was a place where I could go safely, and it had to do with the fact that I – that I did it,’ ‘he said.
LaPierre acknowledged that the rig, called the illusions, was always full of food when he used it, included two water scooters and had a crew of at least three people on board, including a cook.
His testimony was mocked by gun control activists, who said on his frequently repeated line: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good friend with a yacht?” tweeted Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense.
Watts, author of ‘Fight Like a Mother’, also mocks LaPierre’s stated need for protection in ‘the summer after the Sandy Hook shooting’.
A gunman killed 20 children and six educators on Dec. 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“He horribly tried to link the Sandy Hook School shooting and his use of the yacht, saying he started using it as a safe place the summer after the mass shooting,” Watts wrote.
“The urgency of this alleged security concern about LaPierre’s safety – which required him to sail – is questionable, as the shooting at Sandy Hook School took place in December – six months before ‘summer’.”
