One might think Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes, who famously survived the 2015 attack on the Bataclan in Paris, would be a champion of the Parkland kids. One would be very wrong. The Guardian reports Hughes, who previously argued that France's tighter gun-control laws didn't get in the way of the deaths of 89 concert-goers, took to Instagram to comment on the March for Our Lives protest; it notes three of his posts have since been taken down. But this one remains: A cartoon drawing of a woman saying, "I turned in my gun to do my part in ending violence"; a man replies the he cut his genitals off "to stop rape." Then comes Hughes' nearly 250-word caption, which refers to the student victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas several times:
- "We're going to denigrate the memory and curse ourselves by exploiting the death of 16 of our fellow students for a few Facebook likes and some media attention."
- "Then take multiple days off of school playing hooky at the expense of 16 of your classmates blood....!.... it might be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic and disgusting......"
- "As the survivor of a mass shooting I can tell you from first-hand experience that all of you protesting and taking days off from school insult the memory of those who were killed."
- "May everyone of these disgusting vile abusers of the dead live as long as possible so they can have the maximum amount of time to endure their shame....and be Cursed...."
The Guardian notes one of his deleted posts shared an image doctored to show Emma Gonzalez tearing a copy of the Constitution in two (she was really ripping a gun range target), called her a "survivor of Nothing....Lover of Treason," and included the hashtags #loversofsatan and #2ndamendment, among others. Another featured an image of a pro-Second Amendment patch, and a caption that read in part, "I feel the wall of security that the Constitution provides being taken down bit by bit….." At NME, Jordan Bassett writes that "Hughes has previously put his most reductive and irresponsible comments down to PTSD," and acknowledges we can't know what it's like to have seen the bloodshed he witnessed. Still, "it’s time to tune out and focus on the good that is occurring elsewhere." (More Bataclan stories.)
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