West defends NRA, attacks Sheriff ’s Office

Allen West, the former South Florida congressman who was beloved and hated for his verbal grenades, is cranking up his outrage machine again — defending the National Rifle Association from its critics, throwing shade at the Broward Sheriff’s Office and tearing into Hollywood celebrities.

He suggested that armed NRA members would have done a better job intervening to stop the carnage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School than Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, who was on duty at the school during the Feb. 14 massacre in which 17 people were killed and 17 wounded.

“Do us all a favor, take your sorry asses down to Broward County and protest the Broward Sheriff and his agency that failed David Hogg and the students at Stoneman Douglas HS. #tcot #bcot #NRA #2A,” West wrote on Twitter.

Three minutes later, he added:

“How about you take your traveling stupid show to South Florida and find out why the Sheriff ’s Deputy Scot Peterson did not respond to the shooter … since it appears that #NRA members do fire back!”

The hashtags West used referred to top conservatives on Twitter, black conservatives on Twitter, and the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student, has emerged as a prominent national proponent of gun control.

West’s comment about NRA members firing back deals with a mass shooting last year at a church in Southerland Springs, Texas. An armed neighbor fired at the gunman, who fled in his vehicle.

West, a member of the NRA national board of directors, made his views clear in a series of 24 tweets late Monday afternoon. West’s 49-minute tweetstorm was sparked by news that Hollywood celebrities are part of a newly formed group that plans to take on the NRA, which mobilizes opposition to any kind of regulation on firearms.

The NoRA Initiative, which stands for No Rifle Association, includes more than 100 members, including Alec Baldwin, Minnie Driver, Ashley Judd, Debra Messing, Alyssa Milano and Julianne Moore. It also includes Hogg and Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime, 14, was among those killed at Stoneman Douglas.

The organization said some of its efforts would coincide with the NRA national convention May 3-6 in Dallas. West, who moved to Texas after he lost his 2012 re-election campaign, said he hopes they show up. “I cannot wait for these chuckleheads to come to Dallas.”

West, who is AfricanAmerican, described the NRA as a supporter of freed black slaves during Reconstruction after the Civil War “when the #Democrats were running around in white robes & hoods … some things never change, just the attire! And this is the NRA you wish to protest?”

And, he wrote that “You white entertainment elitist progressive socialists don’t give a damn that gang members are acquiring firearms illegally & killing innocent people all across America in urban centers run by #Democrats.”

And, he said, the scandal in which the now disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein preyed on women for years and the entertainment community kept quiet means celebrities have no moral standing to criticize the NRA.

“Why protest the #NRA that offers training programs for women to protect themselves Ms. @DebraMessing, @Alyssa_Milano, @_juliannemoore & @amyschumer? Many women can’t afford a damn personal security detail like y’all. You want them raped like those in Hollywood while you sat back?” West asked.

West first ran for a Broward-Palm Beach county congressional seat in 2008, and lost.

But he rode the 2010 tea party wave to victory, defeating then-U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, a Democrat, and quickly became known more for his incendiary rhetoric than legislating.

For the 2012 election, he moved to a district in northern Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties he thought would be more friendly, but he lost the election.

In 2014 he said he was moving to Texas to take over a conservative think tank.

The NRA website said he was elected to a three-year term on its national board in 2016.