The new head of the National Rifle Association likened anti-gun violence activism to “civil terrorism” and said gun owners are the targets in a new Jim Crow era.
Oliver North, a former Fox News contributor and a central figure in the Iran-Contra affair, was named as the next president of the gun lobby earlier this week.
The 74-year-old former Marine lieutenant colonel told The Washington Times of what he sees as a vast conspiracy aimed at the Second Amendment and the NRA.
He believes the organization is being treated worse than civil rights organizations in the Jim Crow era, citing the splashing of fake blood on the Virginia home of a top NRA official and other personal “threats” aimed at NRA leaders and members as examples.
“They can do all the cyberwar against us — they’re doing it. They can use the media against us — they are. They’ve gone after our bank accounts, our finances, our donors, and obviously individual members,” North told the conservative website. “It’s got to stop. And that’s why the leadership invited me to become the next president of the NRA.”
North blasted the survivors-turned-activists that emerged in the wake of the Parkland school shooting in Florida as part of a propaganda machine.
“They call them activists. That’s what they’re calling themselves. They’re not activists — this is civil terrorism,” he said of the outspoken teens.
Ignoring the history of lynchings, legal segregation and discrimination that African-Americans endured for nearly a century following the end of slavery, North sought sympathy for his organization.
“This is the kind of thing that’s never been seen against a civil rights organization in America,” he said. “You go back to the terrible days of Jim Crow and those kinds of things — even there you didn’t have this kind of thing.
“We didn’t have the cyberwar kind of thing that we’ve got today,” he added.
———
© 2018 New York Daily News
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
