New NRA head blames Ritalin, violent media for school shootings
By Marisa Schultz
May 20, 2018 | 12:56pm | Updated May 20, 2018 | 3:26pm
Oliver North AP
Santa Fe school shooting
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WASHINGTON, DC — The incoming president of the National Rifle Association on Sunday blamed TV and movie violence, the ADHD drug Ritalin and a lack of participation in his group's school-safety program for the nation's epidemic of school shootings — as he pledged to double the size of his organization.
"The problem that we got is we are trying like the dickens to treat the symptom without treating the disease," Oliver North told "Fox News Sunday." "The disease in this case isn't the Second Amendment. The disease is youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence.
"They have been drugged in many cases. Nearly all of these perpetrators are male, and they are young teenagers in most cases. And they've come through a culture where violence is commonplace​. All we need to do is turn on a TV, go to a movie."
North, who admitted "I am certainly not a doctor," went on to target the FDA-approved drug Ritalin for the school violence, too.
"If you look at what's happened to the young people, many of these young boys have been on Ritalin since they were in kindergarten," he claimed.
There is no evidence to date to suggest that Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the teen who gunned down 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Texas on Friday, was on any ADHD medicine.
The NRA did not return a request for comment.
North also argued that the shooting may not have happened had the school taken part in the NRA's School Shield safety program, which helps schools ​assess ways to "harden," or beef up the security at, campus entrances, including through the use of metal detectors.
"If School Shield had been in place in Santa Fe High School, it's far less likely that [Friday's shooting] would have happened," said North, best known for his role in the infamous Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980s.
Santa Fe High School had two armed police officers and an active-shooter defense plan and had won a statewide award for its safety program.
The School Shield program is free to school districts, ​said North, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel.
"If you want to stop the carnage, you are not going to fix it by taking away the rights of law-​abiding citizens," North said. "You've got to fix it in a way that hardens the place sufficiently​. … If that means five metal detectors … you get five metal detectors," he said.
The NRA also supports plans for arming school teachers and staff.
In the wake of the Parkland, Fla.,​ school massacre three months ago, North has been critical of the activism by its teenager survivors, who have led a nationwide movement against the NRA and in favor of gun control.
He has accused the kids of intimidation, harassment and "civil terrorism."
​North said Sunday that the kids are being "used" by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and others to take away the Second Amendment.
North plans to counter the student activism by strengthening NRA membership. He wants to bring the club's numbers from 6 million to 7 million, then ask each member to recruit another person.
"That will put 14 million activists on the street," North said.
Mark Kelly, the wife of former US Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) who survived a shooting​ in 2011​, agrees that schools should be hardened but said it also is time for ​the ​NRA to embrace some gun reforms.
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"Your last guest is about to take over as the president of an organization that is against background checks for gun sales. The most common sense thing that we can do to protect society, they are so strongly against," Kelly, a former astronaut, said.
He accused the NRA of promoting an "alternative reality" that the issue is school entrances and access points, rather than allowing irresponsible people and criminals access to firearms.
"If the issue was more firearms in more places, which is what Oli North and the NRA advocates for, we would live in the safest country on the planet," Kelly said.
N​orth was a key figure in the Iran-contra scandal that involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran and funneling the money to anti-Communist fighters in Nicaragua.
All charges against him were dismissed.
Additional reporting by Max Jaeger
Filed under gun control , national rifle association , oliver north , Santa Fe school shooting , school shootings
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