The father of a student killed in the Parkland, Fla., high school mass shooting remembered late President George H.W. Bush for eviscerating the NRA in a fiery resignation letter from the pro-gun group.
Fred Guttenberg paid tribute to the beloved Republican with a tweet after it was announced Bush died in Houston late Friday night.
"A lot will be written about President George Bush. Whether you agreed or disagreed with him, most would think he always served with honor and decency," Guttenberg wrote Saturday. "This resignation letter that he wrote resigning his NRA membership is only one example."
Guttenberg's 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed when gunman Nikolas Cruz opened fire in the Halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. Seventeen people were killed and more than a dozen were injured in the mass shooting.
Guttenberg has since channeled his grief into a fierce call for gun control. He has become a forceful critic of the National Rifle Association online and in real life alongside his daughter's classmates, who have rocked the country with their advocacy for gun safety.
Bush, once a life member of the pro-gun group, publicly cut ties with the NRA in 1995 over its denigration of law enforcement officers and their response to the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 standoff with religious cultists in Waco, Texas.
In an April 1995 fund-raising letter, NRA chief executive officer Wayne LaPierre wrote of "jack-booted government thugs, federal agents wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms to attack law-abiding citizens."
Bush, deeply offended, wrote in his resignation letter that he was a gun owner and hunter, and supported the NRA's gun training and support of firearms ownership.
"However, your broadside against Federal Agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It directly slanders a wide array of government law officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us," he wrote.
Bush called the NRA letter "a vicious slander on good people."
The former president wrote his letter just after Al Whicher, a member of his vice-presidential Secret Service detail, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.
"He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country _ and serve it well he did," Bush wrote.
