School Shield Logo Descending (Treasured and Precious)

2023

Colored pencil on paper, three parts

Installed dimensions variable, drawing dimensions at 30"х22.25", 22.25"×15", 15"x11"

Description: The NRA launched the School Shield initiative in the weeks after 20 children and six teachers were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012. Self-described as "America's Leading Charitable Organization Helping to Protect Our Children", the foundation would train "school safety assessors" and through its grant program, fund school security upgrades. In March 2020 the program's office was shut down and its three employees were "furloughed". Grant and training activities have not resumed. The grants awarded since 2014 were less than .08 percent of the $2.2 billion in revenue the NRA and its associated foundation raised during the five years the program was active. Despite its apparent suspension, the NRA has continued to use the program's existence as a fundraising tool. As recently as April 2022, the program was mentioned in local NRA fundraising materials and in May 2022, days after a gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, NRA CEO Wayne La Pierre highlighted his organization's efforts to bolster school security through the School Shield program. He described schoolchildren as "our most treasured and precious resource".