A month after the deadly school shootings in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association is taking heat again -- this time for releasing a mobile video game that lets players learn how to shoot at targets.

The game, "NRA: Practice Range," puts the user in a gun range, where they fire a variety of handguns and rifles at stationary targets and earn points for accuracy. Critics are questioning the timing of the game's release Monday -- a month to the day after the Dec. 14 shootings -- and accusing the NRA of hypocrisy because one of its leaders recently blamed video games for stoking gun violence.

"It's outrageous. The NRA never seems to be able to amaze me," said Joel Faxon, a member of Newtown's Police Commission, who described himself as a longtime gun owner.

"There's no reason that they can't espouse safe, effective, appropriate gun usage," he said. "Why do they have to come out with something like this at a time when the nerves and emotions are so raw in Sandy Hook?"

"It strikes me that this is totally inappropriate," George Ferguson, a member of the Newtown Legislative Council, said Tuesday. Ferguson said he had not seen the game.

"I think video games should be part of the dialogue" about Newtown, he added.

Requests for comment from the NRA were not immediately returned Tuesday.

Most criticism of the app, which is available for the iPhone and the iPad, focused not on the content of the game but on the timing of its release. In nationally televised comments a week after the slayings, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, "There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games."

"Really? What a dumb move. Good luck getting anyone to take your video game theory serious after this," wrote a commenter, Mansonr6, on the game's iTunes page.

On iTunes, the only current marketplace for the game, Apple rates it as being appropriate for children 4 and up.