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
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• Rick Perry's target practice video is the talk of NRA meeting

The National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre railed Friday against "elites," whom he accused of harboring a secret agenda of creating a registry of gun owners across the country. 

LaPierre, a top official for the gun-rights lobby, forcefully attacked the Obama administration, Democratic lawmakers and the media during an address before the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He ridiculed proponents of stricter gun controls, and won repeated cheers from the conservative activists in the audience for his defense of Second Amendment rights.

And LaPierre used his speech to slam a proposal before Congress to require background checks for all firearms transactions, a law that has won some new support in the wake of the deadly December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

"You know what's really absurd? Not protecting our children in school," he said, repeating his call for funding armed guards in every school in America. "Here's what the political elites offer instead: a placebo called universal background checks."

LaPierre said the background checks would set the stage for universal gun registration. 

"It's the real goal they've been pushing for decades," he said.

LaPierre sought to set up the battle over gun control as a battle between "elites" — a word he used repeatedly — who view gun owners as "crazy," another term the NRA executive used repeatedly in reference to himself, and how media had characterized him. 

And he stoked fears that universal background checks would lead to newspapers publishing the names and addresses of gun owners, so that "gangs and criminals" or the Mexican and Chinese governments could access them.

LaPierre also mocked the Obama administration and Vice President Joe Biden for his suggestion that a warning shot could ward off an intruder.

"The vice president of the United States actually told women, facing an attack, to actually empty their shotguns in the air. Honestly, have they lost their minds over at the White House?" LaPierre said to wild applause.

The National Rifle Association’s CEO on Thursday accused President Barack Obama of orchestrating a “charade” to dismantle gun rights in his State of the Union address this week.

Wayne LaPierre, the gun lobby group’s executive vice president and CEO, used a speech at a National Wild Turkey Federation conference in Nashville to decry the push for stricter gun laws made by Obama at the conclusion of his annual policy address on Tuesday.

“For our Second Amendment freedoms, Mr. President, we will stand and fight throughout this country as Americans for our freedoms,” LaPierre said to applause. “We promise you that.”

The gun rights advocate complained that “the words ‘school safety’ were nowhere to be found” in Obama’s address and renewed his call for funding to put an armed guard in every school in America. (Obama did speak of the need to “protect our most precious resource:  our children.”)

“It was only a few weeks ago that they were marketing their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting schoolchildren from harm,” LaPierre said.  “That charade ended at the State of the Union, when the president himself exposed their fraudulent intentions. It’s not about keeping kids safe in school.… They only care about their decades-long, decades-old gun control agenda.”

Obama closed the speech by referencing victims of gun violence and victims’ families in attendance at his speech, forcefully repeating that those victims at least “deserve a vote” on the gun control measures proposed by the administration in the wake of the deadly December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote," Obama said to sustained applause. "The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence –- they deserve a simple vote."

LaPierre has been as dogged as ever, though, in resisting those proposals, taking to conservative media in recent days to make his point. Writing Wednesday for the Daily Caller, LaPierre evoked a dystopian vision of a world without guns in the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Sandy in New York.

“After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia,” LaPierre wrote. “Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.”

However, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the time there were no murders committed during the storm or its very immediate aftermath.

Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre fiercely defended his organization's response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school and indicated that they would not support new federal gun regulations. 

LaPierre was panned by critics this weekend following a press conference in which the NRA called for armed security officers  in every U.S. school. He responded to critics this morning, "If it's crazy to call for putting police and armed security in our school to protect our children, then call me crazy." He added that the American people "think it's crazy not to do it."

The NRA chief also dismissed a bill in the works by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would renew the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. "I think that is a phony piece of legislation and I do not think it will pass."

(Watch the wide-ranging, exclusive full interview with Wayne LaPierre here)

There was also news from Capitol Hill this morning as both Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) were unwilling to show any support for former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a name floated as a possible choice to succeed outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at the Pentagon. Senator Graham said he would wait until the confirmation hearings to decide and Senator Schumer declined to comment until an official announcement was made. 

As Andrea Mitchell pointed out on our roundtable: "If a Democratic Senator is not going to come to Chuck Hagel's defense, then I think there is serious problems there."

You can watch the entire program on our website.

We wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

We'll be back next week. If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press. 

David previews this Sunday's exclusive interview with the NRA's Wayne LaPierre. In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, there have been new calls for tougher restrictions on access to guns in America. Sunday, in his first interview since the shooting, we’ll talk exclusively with the head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, about gun control and what he thinks should be done to curb the threat of violence in America.