NRA TV host targets Parkland teens

As they’ve stepped out of the hallways of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and into the national spotlight, the Parkland, Fla., teenagers have become Twitter influencers, TV news show mainstays and the stoic-faced subjects of a Time magazine cover.

But they’ve also increasingly become targets: Their most prominent critics are people who see them less as survivors of a tragedy and more as pawns in a larger effort to influence gun policy.

The latest attack came from Colion Noir, a host on NRA TV who took to the airwaves on the eve of the Parkland teens-led March on Washington, telling them: “No one would know your names” if a student gunman hadn’t stormed into their school and killed three staff members and 14 students.

“To all the kids from Parkland getting ready to use your First Amendment to attack everyone else’s Second Amendment at your march on Saturday, I wish a hero like Blaine Gaskill had been at Marjory Douglas High School last month because your classmates would still be alive and no one would know your names, because the media would have completely and utterly ignored your story, the way they ignored his,” Noir said.

Colion Noir is a pseudonym for Collins Iyare Idehen Jr., a gun rights activist. The man he references, St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Deputy Blaine Gaskill, is the Swat-trained officer who engaged a teenager who opened fire at Great Mills High School in southern Maryland.