HOUSTON -- The National Rifle Association is calling its members to arms for what they say is the next battle in a prolonged war to protect gun rights: the 2014 congressional elections.

"We are in the midst of a once-in-a-generation fight for everything we care about," NRA chief executive and vice president Wayne LaPierre told the gun lobby's membership on the second day of its annual convention. The motto this year is "Stand and Fight."

Gun owners'  freedom, LaPierre said, "is on the line and never more on the line than right now and through the 2014 congressional elections."

LaPierre, a legendary figure in the gun-control wars, has been leading the charge against the first sustained push for new gun laws in nearly two decades -- sparked by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and 6 educators were killed.

Last month, a bill that would have expanded background checks to gun show and Internet sales failed in the Senate. Democrats couldn't get 60 votes for the compromise proposal, with an overwhelming number of Republicans voting "no." 

There were Democrats who opposed it, too: Sens. Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, both up for reelection in 2014, as well as freshman Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. Sen. Max Baucus voted against it, and announced his retirement just days later.

It was a lobbying victory that even the organization's president acknowledged seemed far-fetched in the emotionally charged post-Newtown era, when gun-control advocates were angling for much stiffer laws, such as bans on so-called assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Those measures went down too -- and in much more overwhelming fashion than the hard-fought background checks.

At the convention, outgoing NRA leader David Keene called the defeat of background checks "quite an accomplishment -- an accomplishment that few of us would have predicted back in January."

'Wall of Guns' raffle
Two floors below the speakers' hall, stalls showcasing guns, ammunition and firearms accessories from more than 500 retailers were spread out across nearly nine acres of space. One retailer hawked antique guns from the Civil War era -- a Colt revolver was on sale for nearly $5,000. Another company had a simulated shooting range. And Cabela's, the sporting goods store, sponsored a "Wall of Guns" raffle. 

Wandering through the exhibits were, the NRA claims, more than 70,000 attendees from across the country. The group said it expected record attendance and boasted that it now had more than 5 million members overall.

While polls show overwhelming numbers of Americans support broader background checks, the NRA members at the Houston convention largely didn't share that view.

"Why should we pay through extra legislation, through extra hassle to be a law-abiding citizen?" said Martin Baker, a first-time convention attendee from Winfield, Kan.

"You're not going to ever stop [gun violence] with a band-aid," said Larry Alders, 64, who has been an NRA member since he was 16.

In his speech, LaPierre linked the gun-control debate to the aftermath of the Boston bombings, arguing that as police searched for an armed suspect in a place where guns are heavily regulated, residents were sheltered in place with no means to defend themselves.

“How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?" LaPierre asked the crowd. It was the first time the NRA connected the Boston bombing with the gun control debate.

A day earlier, a parade of conservative politicians -- including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Texas Gov. Rick Perry -- assailed Obama and cast the fight over gun control as part of a broader culture war.

"This is about what kind of people we are and what kind of country we want to be," said Palin, who stood at the podium in a black-and-pink t-shirt featuring moose antlers and the slogan "women hunt." Cruz bragged about his filibuster of gun legislation and received a standing ovation. Back in the Senate, even his GOP colleagues had urged him and others who joined him not to be too public in their protests.

Fight isn't over
Across the street from the convention hall, a handful of protestors stood in a nearby park and read the names of 4,000 victims of gun violence. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, helped organize gun control supporters to attend the convention -- including two relatives Newtown victims. 

"My kids safety trumps your gun rights," read one sign.

Bloomberg, who's spending millions on ads promoting gun control, was himself a frequent target at the convention. LaPierre labeled him a "national nanny." 

There was only one thing the two sides could agree on: the fight over guns isn't over.

"I am in this for the long haul," said Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was killed in Newtown. On Friday, he said, he had a long phone conversation with Pryor, the Arkansas senator, urging him to change his "no" vote if a background check bill comes up again.

The NRA, meanwhile, showcased the next generation. "Our future depends on young NRA members,” said Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist.

The youngest lifetime NRA member in attendance? Three-year-old Elaia Wagen, whose adoptive parents said her grandfather paid the $1,000 that it takes to buy the membership.

"Being a member of the NRA,” her mother, Brook Wagen, said, “for me and my daughter -- and for my sons -- is teaching them they have to protect their freedoms." 

Related: 

• NRA annual meeting convenes as gun-control debate rages
• LaPierre: 'We will never surrender our guns'
• Rick Perry's target practice video is the talk of NRA meeting

Charles Krupa / AP

Paul Regish of East Hartford, Conn., holds signs as gun rights advocates enter the legislative office building at the Capitol in Hartford, Conn., on April 3.

Connecticut lawmakers passed a bipartisan package of gun laws that will expand the state’s existing assault weapons ban, impose limits on the size of magazines, and require universal background checks in the state scarred by one of the worst school shootings in American history.

The state's House voted 105-44 in favor of the bill early Thursday. Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has said that he will sign the legislation into law.

State Sen. John McKinney, a Republican who represents the district where the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre took place, said the bill was far from perfect but a necessary step to ensure the safety of the citizens of the state. 

Moments before the state's Senate bill passed by a vote of 26-10 on Wednesday, McKinney praised the state legislature for coming together in a bispartisan way, a model, he said, for the rest of the country.

"The message we can send if those outside the walls of Connecticut are listening is encourage them to do the same, encourage our elected officials in Washington to put aside the politics and see if they can find some common ground," he said.

Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, a Democrat, opened the debate with a remembrance of the victims of the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook shooting.

“All at once there was a report that as many as 20 children had been killed,” Williams said. “For a few seconds it was hard to breathe. I looked around at my colleagues as we recoiled at the horror of what we were learning.”

Adam Lanza fired off 154 bullets in less than five minutes after entering the school in Newtown with a Bushmaster .223 rifle and several 30-round magazines, investigators have said.

Legislators in Connecticut worked to achieve a bipartisan consensus on the gun-control package. Sen. Majority Leader Martin Looney, a Democrat, told NBC News in March that he hoped for a “broadly supported bipartisan bill,” but said it was “more important that we have a strong bill that meets the need.”

The package put together in Connecticut should serve as an example for national lawmakers, Williams said on Monday.

“There were some who said the ‘Connecticut effect’ would wear off – that it would wear off in Connecticut and it would wear off across the country,” Williams said. “What they didn’t know was that Democrats and Republicans would come together and work to put together the strongest and most comprehensive bill in the United States to fight gun violence, to strengthen the security at our schools, and to provide the mental health services that are necessary.”

Malloy called the package “the toughest law passed anywhere in the country.”

Supporters of stricter gun controls applauded the bill even before it went to a vote.

“I am grateful that the Governor and Connecticut Legislature took a bipartisan path to a strong gun responsibility bill,” Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was killed in the Newtown shooting, said in a statement. “I particularly appreciate that the Legislature listened to us and strengthened the provision on large capacity magazine size. “

Sandy Hook Promise thanked the governor and legislators for “passing the strongest gun responsibility legislation in the nation.”

Dozens of protesters who oppose new gun laws were gathered at the Capitol building in Hartford on Wednesday.

“I’m prepared to contribute maybe to a class-action lawsuit, follow this up through the legal system,” gun owner Joe Winslow told NBC Connecticut.

“I want legislators to pass laws that will protect people while not violating the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” said Joel Klusek, another anti-gun control protester.

A post on the blog of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League, a group that opposes gun control, said that buses would transport protesters from the parking lot of a Cabela’s sporting goods store in East Hartford to the Capitol and back on Wednesday.

“Please help us fill buses to the Capitol in Hartford as we assemble in the gallery above the floor where critical votes will take place,” the post read. “This is a last stand to show our legislators that we will not go away and accept the proposal as our fate.”

“CCDL wishes to thank the NRA for running these buses throughout the day!” the post said.

The state Senate passed the bill just moments after President Barack Obama finished a rally in Denver where he continued his push for Congress to pass a bill requiring background checks for every gun owner.

Next week, the president will travel to Hartford to continue his call for stricter gun control laws as the Senate prepares to take up the bill.

Related:

• Connecticut lawmakers reach deal on 'most comprehensive' gun limits in US
• Investigators: Adam Lanza surrounded by weapons at home; attack took less than 5 minutes
• 'Insane' crowds as customers flood Connecticut gun stores before vote

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 3, 2013 2:36 PM EDT

Capitol Hill will play host to a springtime clash over gun rights, as lawmakers prepare to take up significant gun control legislation for the first time in years. 

The Senate will take up a new bill next month intended to require background checks for every firearm purchase in the country — and proponents of the legislation are girding for a major political showdown against supporters of gun rights and its principal advocacy group, the National Rifle Association. 

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has emerged as one of the most forceful national backers of stricter gun laws, and this weekend launched a $12 million television ad campaign meant to pressure wavering senators to support the new legislation when they return from their holiday break.

"We're trying to do everything we can to impress upon the Senators that this is what the survivors want, this is what the public wants," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. He added later: "If 90 percent of the public want something, and their representatives vote against that, common sense says, they are going to have a price to pay for that."

But his push has been met with strict resistance by the NRA, which has dug in against stricter controls on guns since last December's massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., the catalyzing event for President Barack Obama's renewed push for new gun laws. 

"He can't spend enough of of his $27 billion to impose his will on the American people," said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's CEO and executive vice president, of Bloomberg's new advertising effort. "He can't buy America."

Already, advocates of stricter gun laws have suffered setbacks due to the NRA's resistance. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said this week that he would move forward with legislation following the holiday recess, but said it would exclude a reinstatement of the ban on assault weapons, which appears to lack sufficient support to move forward in the Senate. But Democrats will seek a vote on the ban in the form of an amendment, laying down a political marker — which Bloomberg said he would be watching closely.

"I don't think we should give up on the assault weapons ban," he said. "But clearly, it is a more difficult issue for a lot of people … It may be just that people have different views about assault weapons than they do about background checks."

But even the proposed expansion of background checks is far from assured passage in Congress. Failing to advance this more modest gun control would be a blow to efforts to advance gun controls, even with a high-profile event like the Newtown massacre providing an impetus for action.

LaPierre derided the proposal on background checks as little more than "a speed bump for the law-abiding." Though the NRA had supported the background check system in the past, LaPierre said it was "not fair," "not accurate" and "not instant" in practice.

DANBURY, Conn. – Vice President Joe Biden made a forceful case for the Obama administration's gun control initiatives on Thursday in a speech less than 15 miles down the road from the site of December's Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting.

“I say it's unacceptable not to take this on. It's just simply unacceptable. I say to my colleagues ... if you're concerned about your political survival you should be concerned about the survival of our children,” the vice president said two months after the shooting rampage. ”I believe the price to be paid politically to those who refuse to act, who refuse to step forward, because America has changed on this issue.”

“You should all know the American people are with us. They should know. You all should know. There is a moral price to be paid for inaction," he added.

RELATED: Gun debate is changing the Democratic Party

Continuing his role as the Obama administration's public advocate on gun control, Biden spoke for nearly 30 minutes and met with two of the Newtown shooting victim’s families beforehand.

Adam Lanza, whose shooting spree killed 26 first-graders and educators, took classes as a teenager at Western Connecticut State University -- the venue of Thursday’s conference.

“We have to speak for all those voices -- for the 20 beautiful children who died 69 days ago because they can’t speak for themselves,” Biden told the nearly 300-person crowd. "I can't imagine how we will be judged as a society if we do nothing."

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan echoed similar themes in his remarks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, sometimes you pick the time, sometimes the time picks you and sadly the time has picked us and I’m just convinced that as a country if we don't move forward in a thoughtful way to do something to protect our babies, it will never happen,” he said.

In the wake of the school massacre, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Newtown Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., held this conference, with panel discussions on reform to federal gun laws and one on mental health and school safety.

“Preventing gun violence was thought to be untouchable politically two months ago. That unspeakable horror has given us unstoppable momentum and we must seize this historic moment,” Blumenthal said.

Chris and Lynn McDonnell lost their 7-year-old daughter, Grace, during the shooting on Dec. 14. The couple spoke on the morning panel about gun violence as Grace’s “voice” in this national discussion.

“We ask that our representatives look into their hearts and remember the 26 beautiful lives that were lost,” Lynn McDonnell pleaded, pausing to compose herself as she remembered her daughter.

After a series of high-profile mass shootings during President Barack Obama’s first term, he unveiled his proposals for stricter gun laws last month. His various initiatives include universal background checks on all gun sales, bans on military style assault weapons and bans on high-capacity magazines.

“Whatever laws we have on the books in our state, the need for strong federal legislation has never been clearer. The proposals outlined by the White House will make us and our children safer, no doubt about it,” Democratic Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy advocated.

While debate in Congress is ongoing, and the National Rifle Association vows to fight any new laws, both Obama and  Biden continue to push their agenda across the country.

Just Tuesday, Biden participated in a Facebook town hall with Parents magazine and assured individuals their ability to defend themselves will not be taken away completely.

"If you want to protect yourself, get a double-barreled shotgun," he said. "Have the shells of a 12-gauge shotgun and I promise you - as I told my wife … 'Jill, if there is ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out, put that double barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house. I promise you whoever is coming in is not going to.'"

As the White House considers proposals to curb gun violence, a potential re-upping of the 1990s ban on assault weapons has emerged as the most politically difficult measure for activists hoping to keep the most dangerous weapons out of criminal hands.

But, after pro-gun groups met with Vice President Joe Biden's task force on violence prevention yesterday, at least one participant came away believing that it's a fight that President Barack Obama is willing to try.

Richard Feldman, the president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association said that Biden left the group with the “clear implication” that the president would pursue an assault weapons ban in addition to other regulatory measures. 

In naming possible new regulations this week, Biden mentioned universal background checks and restrictions on high-capacity magazines but did not refer specifically to an assault weapon moratorium. The president and his spokespeople have said repeatedly that the administration is in favor of an assault weapons ban.

Feldman told NBC News said the conversation in the closed-door meeting with gun rights groups was “wide ranging."

“We certainly talked rather extensively about civil commitment laws," he said. "The Attorney General was in the meeting. We talked about enforcement procedures against violations.”

Feldman’s take on the session seemed to be different than the National Rifle Association’s, which came out with a fairly combative statement late in the day indicating that the White House was not open to hearing the concerns of Second Amendment proponents.

“I think that it was a conversation and it wasn't a lecture,” Feldman countered. 

When asked about the NRA’s characterization of the meeting, Feldman praised NRA advocate Jim Baker for forcefully voicing the concerns of the nation's most powerful gun group.

"I think the vice president, who knows Jim, listened to them," he added. "But you know, we come at this from different positions.”

The NRA has stated that they’re going to take their argument up to Capitol Hill, something that some experts say could be part of a two-path approach for the gun rights group.

“My guess is what we're going to see is a kind of two-layer game," said Don Kettl, dean of the Public Policy School at the University of Maryland. "For the NRA itself, they've made very clear so far that they're just not interested in anything that remotely involves any effort to try to reduce the availability of guns, or ammunition or any of the other pieces or anything that would restrict the ownership of guns. But behind the scenes I suspect they and some of their lobbyists are going to be working very carefully to try to find ways of at least minimizing, from their point of view, the damage.”

Kettl thinks this could be a defining moment for the group, “Deep down this is one of those line-in-the-sand kind of issues that will be the make or break for the NRA's power. And I suspect we are in the middle of a defining debate in the pubic right now about the role of guns in American society.”

Updated 10:50 a.m. ET: On NBC’s Meet the Press, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre on Sunday refused to support new gun control legislation and maintained his support for putting armed guards and police in schools in response to the Dec. 14 school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

See the Meet The Press page

“If it’s crazy to call for putting police in and securing our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” LaPierre told NBC’s David Gregory. “I think the American people think it’s crazy not to do it. It’s the one thing that would keep people safe and the NRA is going try to do that.”

He added that the United States is now spending $2 billion to train police officers in Iraq and asked why federal funds could not be spent to train school guards to protect schools in the United States.

Asked about restricting the size of ammunition magazine or clips, LaPierre said, “I don’t believe that’s going to make one difference. There are so many different ways to evade that, even if you had that. You had that for 10 years when (Sen.) Dianne Feinstein passed that ban in ’94. It was on the books. Columbine occurred right in the middle of it – it didn’t make any difference.”

Feinstein, D-Calif., was the author of the 1994 ban on certain types of semiautomatic firearms which expired in 2004. She has announced that she will introduce new legislation early next year. Semiautomatic firearms, including semiautomatic weapons sometimes called “assault weapons,” fire one round per pull of the trigger.

“I know there’s a media machine in this country that wants to blame guns every time something happens,” LaPierre said, but he insisted that an armed guard might have been able to stop Adam Lanza, the killer in Connecticut.

“If I’m a mom or a dad and I’m dropping my child off at school I’d feel a whole lot safer” if there were trained armed security guards or police protecting the school from people such as Lanza, LaPierre said, although he conceded that “nothing is perfect” as a deterrent against crime.

LaPierre also said, “We have a mental health system in this country that has completely and totally collapsed. We have no national database of these lunatics” and complained that de-institutionalization of the mentally ill had put too many dangerous people on the streets of America. “We have a completely cracked mentally ill system that’s got these monsters walking the streets,” LaPierre said.

And he said many states do not put their records of those adjudicated to be mentally ill into the national instant check system that is designed to screen out convicted criminals and the mentally ill from buying guns.

The NRA CEO also argued that the federal government had invested far too little effort into enforcing the longstanding federal law that makes it illegal for convicted felons to possess guns. The federal effort to enforce existing restrictions on gun possession, he said, is “pitiful.”

He said, “If you want to control violent criminals, take them off the street.”

But he firmly opposed curbs on private gun sales and contended that the advocates of stringent restrictions on such sales want to put “every gun sale under the thumb of the federal government.”

LaPierre called Feinstein’s bill “a phony piece of legislation” which he predicted would not become law.

President Barack Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with the job of consulting with members of the Cabinet and outside organizations to come up with legislative proposals by next month.

When asked about this initiative, LaPierre said, “if it’s a panel that’s just going to be made up of a bunch of people that for the past 20 years has been trying to destroy the Second Amendment, I’m not interested in sitting on that panel…. The NRA is not going to let people lose the Second Amendment in this country.”

Following LaPierre on Meet the Press, Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y., said that the NRA leader is “so extreme and so tone deaf that he actually helps the cause of us passing sensible gun legislation in the Congress…. He is so doctrinaire and so adamant that I believe gun owners turn against him as well.”

Schumer said that LaPierre believes “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is good gun with a gun. What about trying to stop the bad guy from getting the gun in the first place? That’s common sense. Most Americans agree with it.”

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., said killers such as Lanza were “non-traditional criminals… people who are not wired right for some reason. And I don’t know if there’s anything Lindsey Graham can do in the Senate to stop mass murder from somebody that’s hell bent on doing crazy things” -- apart from better security in schools. The South Carolina Republican also called for getting “mass murders off the streets before they act, by better mental health detection.”

Graham said that while he was out Christmas shopping in South Carolina this weekend, people “have come up to me (and said) ‘Please don’t let the government take my guns away.’ And I’m going to stand against the assault (weapons) ban because it didn’t work before and it won’t work in the future.”

LaPierre’s appearance on Meet the Press followed the strong reaction over his defiant stand during a Friday press briefing about the NRA’s response to the Connecticut school shootings.

Amid a national debate over what security measures school administrators should take to ensure the safety of students, gun-control advocates reacted with disbelief Friday to LaPierre’s call for armed guards in every school and his blaming of Hollywood films, video games, and popular music for school shootings such as the one in Connecticut.

How firmly the NRA’s allies in Congress will oppose any new legislative initiatives from Obama, Feinstein or others remains an open question.

In a test of the NRA’s legislative influence, the House of Representatives late last year passed the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, which has not yet been acted on by the Senate.

In the House vote, 229 Republicans and 43 Democrats voted for the NRA-backed bill.

The House bill allows a person with a photo identification card and a valid permit to carry a concealed firearm in one state to carry a concealed handgun in another state in accordance with the restrictions of that second state.

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