The former RNC chairman said he found the comments 'haunting.' Steele: NRA presser was 'disturbing'

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele called the National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre’s press conference Friday “very haunting and very disturbing,” in the wake of the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“I don’t even know where to begin. As a supporter of the Second Amendment and a supporter of the NRA — even though I’m not a member of the NRA — I just found it very haunting and very disturbing that our country now is talking about arming our teachers and our principals in classrooms,” Steele said on MSNBC immediately after LaPierre finished his comments.


( Also on POLITICO: 10 top quotes from NRA’s Wayne LaPierre)

Steele continued: “What does that say about us? What does that say about us? I do not believe that is where the American people want to go. I do not believe that is the response that should be coming out of the tragedy out of Newtown.”

Delaware State Attorney General Beau Biden — who is Vice President Joe Biden’s son — said there wasn’t a meaningful dialogue in the press conference, in which LaPierre did not take reporters’ questions.

Biden added: “[There] has to be a much more robust and meaningful dialogue about whether there are certain types of weapons consistent with the second amendment … that just shouldn’t be in the hands of citizens other than those types of assault weapons that you take to battle that don’t belong in our communities. And that’s the discussion that I hope we have in a meaningful way.”