The head of the National Rifle Association lashed out at gun control advocates on Thursday, saying Democratic elites are politicizing the latest mass school shooting in the United States to erode the country's constitutionally guaranteed gun rights.

NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre echoed President Donald Trump's call to arm teachers to prevent school shootings, and weighed into a long-running political and cultural divide over access to weapons that has been inflamed by last week's massacre at a Florida high school that killed 17 students and staff.

"The elites don't care not one whit about America's school system and schoolchildren," LaPierre told a friendly audience of conservatives outside Washington. "Their goal is to eliminate the Second Amendment (of the Constitution) and our firearms freedoms so they can eradicate all individual freedoms."