Wayne LaPierre resigned Friday as head of the National Rifle Association, after more than 30 years at the powerful gun lobby’s helm.
Although LaPierre cited health reasons, his exit—scheduled for the end of the month—comes as he and three other current and former NRA leaders face trial for a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James. James accused the group in 2020 of violating nonprofit laws and misusing millions of dollars from the NRA to pay for extravagant lifestyles for themselves.
Here’s a look back at seven of the most outlandish things LaPierre has said.
1. He said the only thing that can stop a shooter is more guns.
Just one week after the tragic Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, LaPierre insisted that there was no point in trying to pass restrictions on gun access. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” he said.
2. He said gun restrictions won’t stop school shootings.
“We can’t lose precious time debating legislation that won’t work,” he said in his post-Sandy Hook speech. “I call on Congress today to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed officers in every single school in this nation.”
But as the country saw almost a decade later, the presence of police officers on campus did not prevent the shootings in Parkland, Florida, or Uvalde, Texas.
3. He said women are only free if they can own a gun.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, LaPierre said that Hillary Clinton didn’t actually care about women because she supported gun control laws.
“All of America’s women, you aren’t free if you aren’t free to defend yourself,” he said. “If President Obama, Hillary Clinton or anyone else denies you that right, they don’t really care about you at all.”
4. He said guns are necessary because “Latin American gangs” have taken over the U.S.
In a 2013 op-ed for The Daily Caller, widely criticized for its racist undertones, LaPierre justified gun rights on the premise that “Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States.”
Blaming Latin American immigrants, or gangs, was a popular talking point for LaPierre. In 2018, just a week after the Parkland shooting, LaPierre fully embraced xenophobia as he accused Democrats of passing ineffective laws.
“Their laws don’t stop illegal criminals from crossing our borders every single day,” he said, as if gun control was thus completely unnecessary.
5. He did not see the irony of his own words.
“It should not be easier for a madman to shoot up a school than a bank or a jewelry store of some Hollywood gala,” LaPierre said during that 2018 speech, not seeming to realize he had just advocated for gun control.
6. He pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories.
In the same speech, LaPierre fell back on a favorite Republican talking point: blaming prominent Jewish people for the world’s problems. He claimed that socialism was on the rise in the U.S. thanks to “the social engineering and the billions of people like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.”
7. He said all pro-gun control politicians should be afraid to go to bed at night.
The NRA’s annual 2023 convention took place in April, on the anniversary of one of the deadliest mass shootings in the city’s history and just weeks after two major mass shootings in Nashville, Tennessee, and Louisville, Kentucky.
During his speech, LaPierre issued a casual threat. “Gun-hating politicians should never go to bed unafraid of what this association and all of our millions of members can do to their political careers,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
