WASHINGTON, D.C.: The US most powerful pro-gun lobbying group is suggesting that armed police be deployed to every school in the country following a mass shooting that left 20 young children dead.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), which supports a broad interpretation of US citizens’ constitutional right to bear arms, had been under pressure to respond in the wake of last week’s massacre in a Connecticut elementary school.

Even as the NRA leaders made their combative and determined appearance, another four people died in Pennsylvania in America’s latest shooting spree, including the alleged shooter.

And a string of celebrities including Jeremy Renner, Gwyneth Pal-trow and Beyonce launched a video to back a campaign to clamp down on gun sales following the Newtown school massacre.

But the pro-gun lobbyists ceded no ground to those calling for tougher gun laws.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” declared NRA Vice-President Wayne LaPierre on Friday (Saturday in Manila), in his first public comments since the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in New-town, Connecticut.

LaPierre said that the NRA was ready to help train security teams for schools and work with teachers and parents to improve security measures and accused the media and the political class of demonizing gun owners.

As LaPierre and his allies were on stage in Washington on Friday, police in Pennsylvania shot dead a man who had killed three people and wounded “several” others, state troopers.

On Friday, a troubled 20-year-old man burst into the Sandy Hook school and gunned down 20 six- and seven-year-old children and six staff members trying to protect them, before taking his own life. He also fatally shot his mother.

These deaths were the latest in a series of mass shootings in the United States this year, and promp-ted President Barack Obama to throw his weight behind plans to revive a ban on assault weapons.

There were about 310 million non-military firearms in the United States in 2009, roughly one per citizen and people in America are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than someone in another developed country.