From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
The March For Our Lives march/movement has gotten a very special response from pro-gun RW voices–personal attacks against the leaders of the movement, who also happen to be kids who have endured a traumatic event in the form of the school shooting, and are not just working through the grieving process of having lost people, but doing so with courage, thoughtfulness and purpose in a very public way.
Some of these wretched excuses for public comment, such as these comments put out by an NRA spokesperson:
“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.
…treat these young people as if they are opportunists who were just looking for the right occasion–like the murder of their friends–to become “famous”. (The individual, Blaine Gaskill, did not actually stop the shooter at Great Mills High School, it turns out–and the presence of resource officers don’t always act as a deterrent to the murder-minded, because individuals who intend to kill people don’t necessarily seek out “gun-free zones”–they seek out the people they mean to kill, and often have no expectation of their own survival.) It’s fine to wish someone had stopped Nikolas Cruz before he murdered 17 people, but it’s something else to suggest this tragic event simply gave these young activists a “story” or that the media gave them a platform that they have no right to. What happened was tragic, it was their experience, and it is their right to tell their own story, and not have it taken away from them because it doesn’t agree with someone else’s political views.