NRA President-elect Oliver North blames “a culture of violence” and Ritalin for Santa Fe shooting

North suggests Parkland survivors are being controlled by Michael Bloomberg and George Soros

From the May 20 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday:

Video file

CHRIS WALLACE (HOST): I want to start by playing what two students from Santa Fe High [School] said after the shooting. Here they are. 

[BEGIN VIDEO]

DAKOTA SCHRADER: I shouldn't be going through this. This is my school. This is my daily life, I should not have to feel like that. And I feel scared to even go back.

PAIGE CURRY: It's been happening everywhere. I've felt -- I've always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too.

[END VIDEO]

WALLACE: What do you say to young people like that who have come to expect shootings in their schools?

OLIVER NORTH: They shouldn't have to. They shouldn't be afraid to go to school. They shouldn't worry about the fact that they might not go home that night because some crazed person comes in with a firearm. Which is one of the reasons why the NRA for over two years has been advocating a program called School Shield. There's finally legislation for it, thanks to $75 to $100 million appropriated by the federal government to assist in it. Look, if School Shield had been in place in Santa Fe High School, far less likely that that would have happened. 

The problem that we've got is we're trying like the dickens to treat the symptom without treating the disease, and the disease in this case isn't the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence. They've been drugged in many cases. Nearly all of these perpetrators are male, and they're young teenagers in most cases. And they've come through a culture where violence is commonplace. All we need to do is turn on the TV, go to a movie. If you look at what has happened to young people, many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten. Now I am certainly not a doctor, I'm a marine, but I can see those kinds of things happening and endangering those two gals and their siblings.

...

WALLACE: Cameron Kasky, one of the Parkland students who has led the March for Our Lives movement, tweeted this after the shooting. “Donald Trump does not care about you or your kids getting shot.” And here's what you've said about the Parkland school movement. “What they did very successfully with a frontal assault, and now intimidation and harassment and lawbreaking, is they confuse the American people.” Question, what's wrong with students like this fighting, they would say, for their lives?

NORTH: Look at -- I -- that is taken out of context as people are fond of saying in our business. I was talking about the people who've organized the harassment, the vandalism, the threats, the hacking, and throwing the full force of the First Amendment against the Second Amendment. And they're leading the cause. I'm not -- these kids aren't the problem. They're being used by forces far bigger than they are to make sure that the Second Amendment goes away. 

WALLACE: Who is using the Parkland students? 

NORTH: We know what [former New York] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg was up to, we know what George Soros has funded. I mean, in our business, he's gone -- his creations have gone after you, me, and everybody else's and everybody at Fox.

WALLACE: Cameron Kasky would say he's speaking and working for himself and those other kids there.

Previously: 

Disgraced Iran-Contra figure Oliver North to become NRA president

NRA President-elect Oliver North: “Never believe an Iranian because if their lips are moving, they are lying”

NRA President-elect Oliver North smears Parkland survivors as criminals