Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz launched a scathing attack on the National Rifle Association (NRA) this week, comparing the powerful pro-firearms group to terrorists.
"The NRA is kind of just shy of a terrorist organization," Schultz, a Florida Democrat and former chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview with HuffPost published Tuesday.
"They have done everything they can to perpetuate the culture of violence that we have in our country with the spread of assault weapons across the nation."
Wasserman Schultz’s salvo came in response to criticism aimed at anti-gun student activists from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland Florida, where on Feb. 14th, where 17 students and adults were shot dead by a maniac armed with an AR-15 assault rifle.
Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North, the NRA’s newly-elected president, told The Washington Times: "They call them activists. That’s what they’re calling themselves. They’re not activists — this is civil terrorism."
Wasserman Schultz also blasted North’s declaration that the pressure the NRA faces has “never been seen against a civil rights organization in America,” and tops “the terrible days of Jim Crow.”
"The Jim Crow laws actually resulted in the deaths of people standing up for their rights," Wasserman Schultz told HuffPost, referring to state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern U.S. from the late 19th century until 1965.
“People that are dying as a result of the infection that is the spread of assault weapons thanks to the NRA are being murdered in cold blood without any cessation or interest on the part of the NRA to do anything about it."
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