Newtown school shootingNRA shuts down Facebook page in wake of Connecticut shooting

In the aftermath of the killing of twenty children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, the National Rifle Association (NRA), an organization which energetically advocate for -gun rights for U.S. citizens, has deactivated its Facebook page, just one week after celebrating the fact that it has gathered 1.7 million “likes” on the page.

After the shooting, the page has been flooded with posts by  gun-control proponents. The NRA has also gone silent on Twitter, where it  has more than 60,000 followers. Although the page remains live, there has not been a single update since the Friday shooting. Normally the page is updated several times a day.

Twitter members across the world have attacked the NRA page with anti-gun messages, although many supported the NRA’s campaign for gun ownership made their views known  on the page as well.

Since the Friday shooting, the President – obliquely – and, more directly, many elected officials around the nation have called for stricter gun laws and more thorough background check on those who buy guns.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg,  one of the leading voices for gun control in the United States, said: “It’s time for the president to stand up and lead,’’ Bloomberg, an independent who endorsed Obama for reelection, said during an appearance on NBC’S ‘‘Meet the Press.’’ ‘‘This should be his number one agenda. He’s president of the United States. And if he does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal guns” next year.

Connecticut governor Dannel Malloy asked why anyone would need to possess high-caliber weapons such as a 10mm Glock and 9mm Sig Sauer, both semi-automatic weapons the killer used in the attack.

‘‘You don’t hunt deer with these things,’’ said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” ‘‘And I think that’s the question that a lot of people are going to have to resolve their own minds: Where should this line get drawn?’’

According to David Gregory, the host of “Meet the Press,” the show invited “31 pro-gun-rights senators” to join the discussion. ‘‘We had no takers,’’ Gregory told the Boston Globe.

Some argue that stricter gun laws are not the solution.

Representative Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) was the only gun-right activists who spoke to the media this week, when he appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” Gohmert feels that the answer to preventing such massacres is for Americans to carry more guns.

“There has been great investigation and study into this,” Gohmert told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, arguing that mass killings happen where citizens tend to be unarmed. “They choose this place [because] they know no one will be armed.”

Gohmert defended the sale of assault weapons and said that the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School  should have been armed herself.

“Chris, I wish to God she had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” Gohmert told  Wallace.

Ben Stein, in  an opinion piece for CBS News earlier this year, says that stricter gun laws will not change anything andtalked about cities where strict gun laws have not led to fewer murders.

“In Sandpoint, North Idaho, where I live for most of the summer, it’s extremely easy to buy a gun. You can buy them at stores and at gun shows, or just at yard sales,” Stein wrote. “Yet there are almost no gun deaths in Bonner County, Idaho. The last ones of note in North Idaho were done by the FBI at Ruby Ridge, and that’s a different story.

“On the other hand, in my beloved Los Angeles, where I live most of the year, there’s extremely strict gun control. It’s a real project to buy a gun. Here, we have gang shootings and death by guns on a terrifying scale,” Stein added. “In my native city of Washington, D.C., the same goes: Strict gun control and lots of shootings. The same goes for Chicago, strict gun control and a lot of killing.”