12:08

The National Rifle Association refused to issue the Guardian US with accreditation for its annual convention, but my colleague Lois Beckett is in Louisville and covering the NRA’s annual meeting nonetheless. Only a day after the group endorsed Donald Trump for president, its chief lobbyist praised Bernie Sanders for his stance on lawsuits against gunmakers.

During a March debate in Michigan, Sanders said: “If you go to a gun store and you legally purchase a gun, and then, three days later, if you go out and start killing people, is the point of this lawsuit to hold the gun shop owner or the manufacturer of that gun liable?

“If they are selling a product to a person who buys it legally, what you’re really talking about is ending gun manufacturing in America. I don’t agree with that.”

Cox. Photograph: REX Shutterstock

A hall full of NRA members gave the clip a smattering of applause. To laughter, Chris Cox, head of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said: “I don’t say this often … OK, fine, I’ve never said it. But Bernie’s right.

“Holding gun manufacturers liable for the acts of madmen and terrorists will put them out of business overnight.”

Cox said Clinton’s support of lawsuits against gun companies was a “backdoor” attempt to ban guns by “suing gun manufacturers into bankruptcy”.

Earlier this year, Sanders suggested that a lawsuit against the companies that sold a gun used in the 2012 Newtown school shooting was “a backdoor way” to ban assault weapons.

Family members of the 20 children and six adults who died at Sandy Hook elementary school are suing the manufacturer, distributor and dealer of the military-style Bushmaster rifle that was used. Lawyers for the families argue the companies were negligent in selling a dangerous weapon to the general public, and that macho advertising may be designed to target insecure, powerless young men.

The gun companies in the suit say that they are protected by the 2005 federal shield law that Sanders supported, and that the Sandy Hook tragedy had nothing to do with the type of weapon used, which was legally purchased by the gunman’s mother.

The Clinton campaign has highlighted the case, and she has won endorsement from some family members of victims from Sandy Hook victims and other mass shootings.

The Sandy Hook families have won a series of small technical victories in recent months, with a Connecticut judge ruling in early May that gun companies should begin the discovery process. Whether the case can move forward despite the federal shield law will be decided in October.

Sanders backed off from his support of the 2005 shield law earlier this year, with his campaign saying he would now support a repeal. But as Clinton and some family members of Sandy Hook victims have criticized his stance on the gun industry, he has repeated his support for the central tenet of the law: that gun companies should not be held responsible if they sell a gun lawfully and it is later used in a crime.

Cox told NRA members that Clinton’s support for lawsuits against gun companies had nothing to do with safety “and everything to do with banning your guns”.

“When a criminal knocks out a convenience store clerk with a baseball bat, you don’t sue Louisville Slugger,” he said.