About 500 vocal protesters – holding photos of this week`s Texas shooting victims – have gathered out the National Rifle Association convention in that state.

There is also a group of young children wearing signs that read AM I NEXT?

Inside the convention centre in Houston about 450 km  west of Uvalde  where a gunman killed 19 this week at an elementary school,  attendees are handling rifles, handguns, hunting and assault rifles at dozens of booths.

Republican former President Donald Trump and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, are scheduled to deliver addresses Friday afternoon. Two other Republican speakers, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, dropped out of in-person remarks.

More than 90 minutes before former President Donald Trump, Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem were scheduled to speak, people waited in line to pass through metal detectors and enter the auditorium.