Students remember Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s ‘cruel comments’ on Parkland shooting anniversary

On the sixth anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., North Carolina students have released a video about what they say are “cruel comments” Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson lodged against its survivors.

Robinson, R-Guilford, is a gubernatorial candidate.

Seventeen students and faculty died during one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings at the high school, which has since been demolished.

“Student activists, who are basically begging for their lives to be made more safe in this country, and he’s mocking them?” Luke, a UNC-Chapel Hill student, said in the nearly two-minute long video. “That shows that he does not care about us.”

Enfiniti, a junior at Meredith College, said Robinson is unfit to lead.

“I wouldn’t want someone like that representing me or being the person that I trust with my safety and livelihood,” Enfiniti said.

Other video participants noted recent active shooter events at UNC-Chapel Hill, as wells family members and friends who have been affected by gun violence in communities and in schools.

A Coalition Against Robinson’s Extremism (CARE) press release that accompanied the video did not provide a last name for the students. The video included students in both college and high school.

Less than a week after the Parkland shooting, Robinson made a gun rights’ speech before the Greensboro City Council that launched his political career. He was praised and scorned for the video, which has been viewed millions of times.

“What I want to know is, when are you all going to start standing up for the majority? And here is who the majority is. I’m the majority. I’m a law abiding citizen whose never shot anybody,” said Robinson said during the council meeting.

Comments Robinson made in a Facebook post in the wake of the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting were highlighted in the press release.

“Let me see if I have this correct. A spoiled, angry, disobedient CHILD shot and killed 17 of his classmates, and now spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN are trying to tell law abiding ADULTS that we must give up our Constitutional RIGHT to own certain weapons,” Robinson said in a Feb. 27, 2018 Facebook post.

Robinson didn’t stop there. He argued that a conservative approach to school security and safety would have prevented the shooting.

“If, two days before this shooting, a hard nosed nonsense conservative had walked into that school and put into place the ideals and principles that would have avoided that massacre, you spoiled little bastards would have kicked and screamed like babies in a crib,” Robinson wrote in the post. “That’s what you are doing now. In fact you’re doing less than that. A baby’s cries are useful and necessary.”