Eric Church calls out NRA over Las Vegas shooting: 'You shouldn’t have that power over elected officials'

Country music star headlined Las Vegas music festival where 53 were killed

Eric Church performs during Pepsi's Rock The South Festival in Alabama (Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Rock the South Festival)

Country music star Eric Church has called out the National Rifle Association (NRA), saying he “blame[s] the lobbyists” for not stopping mass shootings like the one at a Las Vegas music festival he headlined last year.

Mr Church took on America’s biggest gun rights lobbying group in a new interview, saying they were part of the reason few gun control measures were passed after the October mass shooting.

“I don’t care who you are – you shouldn’t have that kind of power over elected officials,” Mr Church told Rolling Stone of the lobbying group.

He added: “At this point in time, if I was an NRA member, I would think I had more of a problem than the solution. I would question myself real hard about what I wanted to be in the next three, four, five years.”

The 41-year-old headlined the multi-day Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas where a lone gunman opened fire in October, killing 58 people and wounding more than 800. While Mr Church had played his last show two days earlier, he said he was “wrecked” by the knowledge that his fans were among the victims.

The shooting galvanised calls for gun control reforms in the US, which only grew louder after a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida four months later. A major target of outrage was the NRA, which spends millions of dollars each year fighting against stricter gun laws.

The gunman in the Las Vegas shooting was Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man who rented a room in a nearby hotel, and secretly stockpiled dozens of firearms in the week before.

Mr Church said he was a supporter of the Second Amendment – a provision in the US Constitution that guarantees the right to bear arms – but added that in Mr Paddock’s case, “nobody should have that many guns and that much ammunition and we don’t know about it”.

“Something’s gotta be done so that a person can’t have an armoury and pin down a Las Vegas SWAT team for six minutes,” he said. That’s f***ed up.”

The Independent has reached out to the NRA for comment.