The National Rifle Association’s Annual Meetings and Exhibits continued in Nashville, Tennessee this weekend. Its relevance to the 2016 presidential election was clear. Most of the leading Republican hopefuls were scheduled to speak, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, was a particular target, 24 hours before she was scheduled to officially launch her bid for the White House.



The NRA’s annual meeting has turned into an early GOP convention and rally. Some 70,000 gun enthusiasts converged on Nashville this year.

“When our next president is elected, we vow on this day that name will not be Hillary Rodham Clinton,” said NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre in his keynote speech on Saturday morning, as the audience roared and leapt to its feet.

On Friday, LaPierre had warned that a Clinton presidency would not bring promise and opportunity but “a permanent darkness of deceit and despair, forced upon the American people to endure”.

Almost all the likely Republican presidential candidates spoke on Friday, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Texas senator Ted Cruz, Florida senator Marco Rubio, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, former Texas senator Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.



Cruz called Clinton a “gun-grabber” for her support for gun control legislation, while Jindal said she was part of a “vast leftwing conspiracy” and called the NRA “the most effective civil rights organisation” in the US.

Bush said the former senator and secretary of state wanted “to take the guns out of the hands of the good guys and the hands of law-abiding citizens”.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, meanwhile, had a message for Obama.

“Mr President,” he said, “the last time I checked, the second amendment is part of the constitution. You don’t get to pick and choose which part of [it] you support.”

The former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Indiana governor Mike Pence canceled their appearances; declared presidential candidate Rand Paul, who supports a rival gun group, was not invited.



On Saturday, 500 gun-safety campaigners from the grassroots group Moms Demand Action rallied in downtown Nashville, holding up messages such as “Not One More” in an attempt to publicise the abnormally high level of child gun deaths in America.



An attendee inspects a rifle during the 2015 NRA Annual Meeting & Exhibits on Friday. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that more than 60 children aged 14 or under die annually in the US from unintentional shootings.



The founder of Moms Demand Action, Shannon Watts, pointed out the irony that one of the venues being used by the NRA for country music concerts this weekend has banned the public from bringing in any guns, while guns on sale in the main exhibition halls must be rendered inactive as a condition of display. Any guns bought at the NRA convention must be collected from a federally licensed dealer near the purchaser’s home, which will conduct a background check.

“We’re here to say the NRA’s extremist agenda is not OK with us,” Watts told the Guardian on Saturday. “They are pushing to have more guns carried in places like schools and parks and they try to block efforts to require universal background checks – but there are no working guns allowed on display in the exhibition, no guns at all in the music venue and they are requiring background checks for purchases made at their own meeting.

“It’s beyond irony.”

Still, a star-studded line-up of speakers at the NRA meeting outshone the weapons on sale and display in the 350,000 sq ft of exhibition space.

The leading GOP contenders for 2016 took turns in criticising nuclear talks with Iran and President Obama’s efforts to combat Isis; supporting religious freedom legislation of the kind that recently stirred controversy in states such as Indiana and Arkansas; and talking about gun ownership, often in the same breath as they roasted Hillary Clinton.

In 2005, as Florida governor, Jeb Bush signed into law “stand your ground” legislation that allows an armed civilian who believes his or her life is threatened to use deadly force, as in the case of George Zimmerman, who was not convicted over the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.



“You shouldn’t have to choose between being attacked and going to jail,” Bush told the NRA meeting, to raucous applause. “The only thing you should be worried about is keeping yourself and your loved ones safe.”

Jonathan Falwell, the pastor and son of the television evangelist Jerry Falwell, was scheduled to address an NRA prayer breakfast on Sunday.