Education Chief Takes Aim at NRA Over Gun Violence

Education Secretary Richard W. Riley, expressing alarm about a spate of school shootings, on Tuesday challenged the National Rifle Assn. and its new president, actor Charlton Heston, to stop complaining about their media image and start working to keep guns from unsupervised children.

In a speech to school officials from around the country, Riley attributed recent school shootings in Springfield, Ore., Jonesboro, Ark., and other towns to a national “love affair with violence” and urged parents to “reconnect” with their children to head off trouble.

But he reserved his sharpest comments for the NRA, whose newly elected president lashed out at the Clinton administration and the news media Monday, even as he pledged to steer the 2.8-million member organization back to the U.S. political mainstream.

“Unsupervised gun use and children do not mix,” Riley told 450 school officials involved in the federal Safe and Drug-Free Schools program. “If Charlton Heston and the NRA want to come into the ‘mainstream of American political debate,’ then they need to stop defining themselves as ‘victims of media manipulation’ and help keep our children from becoming the victims of gun violence.”

Bill Powers, an NRA spokesman, said that instead of criticizing Heston, Riley would do better to reduce violence in schools through policies that deal more effectively with troubled children.

The NRA is not opposed to such safety devices as trigger locks but opposes “one-size-fits-all federal mandates,” Powers said. “You can’t legislate responsibility. The key is education.”

In Memphis, Tenn., Tuesday, representatives from Springfield; Jonesboro and Pearl, Miss.; Paducah, Ky.; and Edinboro, Pa., met to talk about how to prevent the type of school shootings their communities have experienced in recent months. The gathering was closed to the media.

Bill Reisman, a specialist in antisocial behavior among children, who helped organize the meeting, said preventing violence at school has to start at home. Parents should know their children’s bedrooms “like the back of their hand” and realize something may be wrong if violent pictures are displayed or if books and records champion antisocial themes, he said.