NRA official, gun rights activist duped into fake graduation ceremony

An organization headed by the parents of a child killed during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, tricked two prominent gun rights advocates into speaking at a fake high school commencement rehearsal held this month at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds.

The two speakers addressed a field of 3,044 empty white chairs secretly meant to signify the number of students in the 2021 nationwide graduating class whose lives were cut short by gun violence.

Change the Ref, led by Manuel and Patricia Oliver, posted clips on Wednesday of the speeches given by former National Rifle Association President David Keene and economist and former Department of Justice adviser John Lott as part of a three-video documentary filmed on June 4. The videos also include interviews with Manuel and Patricia, whose 17-year-old son, Joaquin, was killed in 2018, and clips from 911 calls and other school shooting-related media.

“We want to tell everyone that this could happen to you at any moment,” Manuel Oliver told the Review-Journal in an interview Thursday. “You’re not safe or an exception when it comes to being a victim of gun violence. This is not a school problem — not a Parkland, Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles problem. This is a national epidemic that America seems not to be able to solve.”

Raising awareness

Oliver said the video’s purpose was to spread awareness and ultimately lead viewers to a petition circulated by Change the Ref calling for Congress and the U.S. government to establish universal background checks as a requirement for firearms purchases. (Currently, guns sold by licensed firearms dealers require background checks, but sales between private parties do not.)

As of Thursday evening, the petition had received nearly 12,000 signatures, and Oliver said it would reach its goal of 15,000 within 24 hours of the release of the videos.

“We didn’t choose to do any of this,” Oliver said. “We had to do it after we lost our son three years ago. This is our day-to-day life, now. I don’t have many options to empower the legacy of my son, but these campaigns make sense when they describe in a graphic way wrong things that are happening and how they affect our society.”

The videos depict what Keene and Lott were led to believe was a rehearsal for the graduation ceremony of James Madison Academy, which does not exist. They were later told the graduation ceremony had been canceled.

“Picture for a minute the young James Madison, for whom this school is named,” Keene said in the video.

“This year, you focused on one of the most important of Madison’s amendments, the Second Amendment,” Keene said. “There are some who continue to fight to gut the Second Amendment, but I’d be willing to bet that many of you will be among those who stand up and prevent them from succeeding.”

An attempt to reach Keene through his personal website was not successful.

Background checks stop sales

“Gun control advocates and Democrats will fight you tooth and nail,” Lott said in the video. “They want to go and say we’ve stopped 3.5 million dangerous people. I look at it as we’ve stopped 3.5 million law-abiding citizens who wanted to get a gun.”

Lott said Thursday his comments were taken out of context and only made after a fake official from the fictitious school told him the graduating class had selected him as its commencement speaker specifically to discuss background checks and gun rights. He does not definitely oppose universal background checks, he said, but instead favors improving the background check system currently in place.

“Of the 3.5 million initial denials (from purchasing firearms) due to background checks, more than 99 percent of those are false positives,” said Lott, who advised the Justice Department on statistics under former President Donald Trump, in an interview with the Review-Journal. “What we should do is require the federal government meets the same standard of quality in background checks that private companies do.”

Lott said the government should also pay for all background checks, so cost is not prohibitive to gun ownership. He also called the current background check system discriminatory to minorities.

He provided emails and text messages from someone called Jordan Simon, who reportedly served as “board chairman” of James Madison, purported to be a private, online high school in Las Vegas. Simon listed a Las Vegas phone number and a website, jamesmadisonacademy.net, that has since been taken down. Lott said the website was professionally made and featured photos of students and a roster of teachers, complete with testimonials.

Simon offered to cover Lott’s charges for air travel and hotel, as well as “$1,000 in spending cash,” in exchange for his speech. Lott opted to drive about 1,000 miles from Montana and asked only for $500 in reimbursement, which he said he has not yet received.

Lott also expressed his discomfort with speaking about background checks and politics in the emails to Simon. He told the Review-Journal he prefers to offer advice on hard work to graduating classes.

Trickery lured speakers

A news release circulated by Change the Ref mocked Keene and Lott for failing to see through the ruse.

“Ironically, had the men conducted a proper background check on the school, they would have seen that the school is fake,” it read.

The release also accused both Lott and Keene of spending “decades using their power and influence to block background checks and common-sense gun reform, which could have saved thousands of these graduates’ lives.”

It is unclear whether Circus Circus hotel-casino owner Phil Ruffin, a prominent Republican donor who owns the adjacent festival grounds, signed off on the video. The hotel did not respond to a request for clarification.

Oliver said the group chose the venue because speakers are more likely to accept a free trip to speak in Las Vegas.

When asked about Lott’s protests over the deception and editing of his speech, Oliver said Lott “has a right to try and find a way out of this mess and not look like a fool.”

Contact Rory Appleton at rappleton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0276. Follow @RoryDoesPhonics on Twitter.

Warning to readers: The following videos contained snippets of 911 calls and the sounds of gunfire.