Former U.S. vice presidential contender Sarah Palin has told Americans not to give up their guns.

She was speaking at a National Rifle Association conference in Texas.

It's the group's first big event since Congress rejected gun control laws - proposed after the Newtown School massacre last December.

Sarah Palin told the crowd that the elite media would never let a Republican president get away with what Barack Obama has done in his push for new gun laws.

The former Alaska governor recalled that the national press “tore apart” George W. Bush for using “fleeting images” from September 11, 2001, during his 2004 reelection campaign

At the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting, Palin slammed Obama for flying the grieving parents of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Air Force One and then “making them backdrops” at rallies.