Renewing Bond With the N.R.A., Trump Appeals for Help in the Midterms

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Mr. Duckworth added that the Trump-Pence tag team appearance was encouraging: “It’s very good that they’re supporting the N.R.A.”

The N.R.A. convention has unfolded, so far, as a display of strength and defiance for a group that is battling furious criticism from Democrats in Washington and on the midterm campaign trail. The N.R.A. has faced several policy setbacks on the state level in recent months, as Republican governors in Florida and Vermont signed gun restrictions the group opposed.

Yet if Parkland cast a shadow over the political speeches on Friday, it was a faint one.

The president alluded to the “monstrous attack” in Florida and described having been moved by his meetings with parents and survivors. But he dismissed gun-control proposals as ineffective, and pointed to a funding package for school-safety measures as an alternative.

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence again called for allowing certain people to carry firearms on school property. And arguing that gun rights were at stake in November, Mr. Trump invoked foreign cities like Paris and London where firearms are harder to obtain and blamed those gun laws for acts of terrorism.

Mr. Trump mimicked what he described as the unimpeded massacre of unarmed people in a Paris terror attack: “Come over here — boom,” he said, imitating the firing of a gun with his hand.

If patrons had been armed, Mr. Trump said, things might have ended differently.

Mr. Cox, speaking minutes before Mr. Trump, acknowledged the “horrible tragedy” of the Parkland massacre, and emphatically rejected the stricter gun regulations that Democrats and some Republicans have proposed.

Rather than blaming gun owners for mass shootings, Mr. Cox said, Americans should reproach the institutions of government and law enforcement that fail to stop such killings. He criticized the F.B.I. and the Broward County, Fla., sheriff’s department for neglecting to act on repeated signals that Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland gunman, appeared to be violent and dangerous.

“The 5 million law-abiding men and women of the National Rifle Association will not accept one shred of blame for the acts of madmen and the failures of government,” Mr. Cox said.

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