Conservative activist Star Parker blamed the survivors of the recent mass shooting at a Florida high school for helping to bring about the massacre by not making friends with the future gunman, saying in a television interview yesterday that students protesting in favor of strengthened gun laws are acting like part of “a nation of victims” and that “whoever sat next to him in class, they’d better not be the ones who are protesting out there today.”
Parker spoke yesterday with EWTN host Lauren Ashburn, who played video clips of students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School protesting in favor of stricter gun laws before asking Parker to explain why “you blame students for this shooting.”
“Well, not necessarily one individual student, but we can call for gun control if we want to as a nation, we can call for more federal laws if we want to as a nation, but usually when you’re faced with tragedy, you first check yourself,” Parker said. “We have forgotten how to just look inwardly. We’ve become such a nation of victims that we’ve forgotten to say, ‘Wait a minute, what could I have done?’”
“Well, what could these poor students have done?” Ashburn asked.
“Well, perhaps said ‘hello,’ perhaps said ‘I’m sorry to hear your dad died,’” Parker said. “This is a very small community of people we’re talking about. This is not the responsibility of Washington, D.C., or the NRA. This is the responsibility of people that are closest to someone to be able to look them in the eye as an individual. So the challenge of this whole nation of victims is that now it’s not about us anymore, it’s about somebody else, our problems are somebody else’s fault. Well, no, actually, this is a very small community, someone must have saw his sadness, someone must have known his dad died.”
She went on to discuss how mass shootings might be prevented by designing schools like hotels and stopping what Ashburn called the “breakdown of the family,” before returning to how the students in Florida could have stopped things just by being nicer to their future attacker.
“Well, they expelled him probably because he was acting out,” she said, “and he was acting out probably because he didn’t have any friends—you know, whoever sat next to him in class, they’d better not be the ones who are protesting out there today.”
