Jay Leno backed out of a scheduled performance for a national gun trade association after an uproar from gun control groups.
Leno was supposed to perform for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is based in Newtown, Connecticut. Gun control groups including the Newtown Action Alliance protested his performance and circled a petition demanding he cancel.
“It’s disheartening as a Newtown resident,” the Alliance’s chairman said of Leno’s plans.
But the foundation’s actual event where Leno would have appeared, its annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT), will not be held in Newtown—it’s at the Venetian hotel in Vegas.
Mother Jones reported on the kerfuffle, and a few hours after they published their story Wednesday, Leno contacted them to say he had canceled the show and informed the Newtown Action Alliance of his decision.
“I understand it’s Newtown, and of course I get it,” Leno said. “It’s just sometimes, mistakes get made.”
The gun trade group issued a statement saying they were “clearly disappointed” by Leno’s decision, and slammed the “bullying political tactics of the gun control groups that seem to have as little respect for the First Amendment as they continually demonstrate with regard to the Second Amendment.”
(h/t Mediaite)
