Incoming National Rifle Association president Oliver North has zero intentions of backing down to gun control activists.
Instead, the former Marine lieutenant colonel and talk show host plans to grow the gun rights organization well beyond the almost six million currently on the rolls.
In an interview with The Washington Times published Wednesday, North said he wants to add one million new members “as fast as we can” to combat the efforts of gun control activists to take away the Second Amendment rights of ordinary Americans.
“They can do all the cyberwar against us — they’re doing it,” North told the Times. “They can use the media against us — they are. They’ve gone after our bank accounts, our finances, our donors, and obviously individual members. It’s got to stop. And that’s why the leadership invited me to become the next president of the NRA.”
North called recent post-Parkland shooting intimidation efforts against high profile gun rights figures “civil terrorism.”
“They call them activists,” said North. “That’s what they’re calling themselves. They’re not activists — this is civil terrorism. This is the kind of thing that’s never been seen against a civil rights organization in America. You go back to the terrible days of Jim Crow and those kinds of things — even there you didn’t have this kind of thing. We didn’t have the cyberwar kind of thing that we’ve got today.”
Calling the Parkland shooting “a travesty,” North acknowledged its role in allowing gun opponents to confuse the American public.
“What they did very successfully with a frontal assault, and now intimidation and harassment and lawbreaking, is they confused the American people,” said North.
“Our job is to get the straight story out about what happened there, and to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen again because the proper things are being done with the advocacy of the NRA.”
North plans to use a “pretty big base” of 23 million veterans and family members gained from his long-running Fox News documentary “War Stories” and his military connections to “counterpunch” against gun control activists.
“There are people running in fear from what happened down in Parkland thinking that the NRA is on its heels — it’s not,” said the incoming NRA president. “What we have to do is assure them that being associated with the NRA is a good thing for their re-election chances. It’s a positive thing.”