The head of the National Rifles Association, Wayne LaPierre, feared for his safety after mass shootings in recent years, forcing him to take refuge on board a friend’s luxury yacht, said the arms rights defender.
LaPierre made the admission in a deposition connected to the NRA bankruptcy case in Dallas.
“They just let me use it as a security withdrawal because they knew about the threat I was suffering from. And I was basically under presidential threat without presidential security in terms of the number of threats I was receiving,” said LaPierre.
“And we were all struggling to deal with that kind of situation with an ordinary citizen with the amount of threats that we were having. And this was the only place that I hope can be safe, where I remember getting there, ‘Thank God I’m safe, no one can bring me here. ‘ And that’s what happened. That’s why I used it. “
LaPierre was asked why he did not pay the yacht owner, Hollywood producer Stanton McKenzie, for his use or cited it in a conflict of interest manner.
“Actually, I thought that, given the security threat I was under and the fact that the NRA was – I was almost unsure how to protect someone with the amount of threat I was having, that – that my job and the threat that came with this, this was – it was a place where I could go and be safe, and it was related to what I – that I – that I did that, “he said.
LaPierre acknowledged that the vessel, dubbed Illusions, was always fully stocked with food when used, included two personal watercraft and had a crew of at least three people on board, including a cook.
His testimony was ridiculed by gun control activists, who took advantage of his often repeated phrase: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun”.
“Is the only thing that prevents a bad guy with a gun a good friend on 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 ridiculed LaPierre’s stated need for protection “in the summer after the Sandy Hook shooting”.
A sniper killed 20 children and six educators on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“He rudely tried to link the shooting at Sandy Hook School and his use of the yacht, saying he started using it as a safe place ‘in the summer after’ the mass shooting,” wrote Watts.
“The urgency of this alleged concern for LaPierre’s safety – which required him to set sail – is questionable, considering that the shooting at the Sandy Hook School took place in December – six months before the ‘summer’.
