Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes, who survived the terrorist attack during his band's concert at the Bataclan theater in Paris in 2015, took to Instagram Sunday to slam the survivors of the Parkland shooting as "vile abusers of the dead," in the wake of Saturday’s student-led March For Our Lives demonstrations across the country.
Hughes accompanied the comment with a vulgar Instagram post equating gun violence with sexual assault.
"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 and abuse and insult me and every other lover of liberty by your every action," Hughes wrote.
He accused Gonzalez of being "the Awful Face of Treason" and a "survivor of Nothing" before deleting another Instagram post which featured a doctored photo of Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez ripping apart the U.S. constitution, NBC News reported.
Gonzalez spoke with other Parkland, Florida, students on Saturday at the March for Our Lives protest in Washington to demand action on gun control after a former classmate armed with an AR-15 rifle went on a rampage at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17.
"The best thing to do to combat chronic abusers and disregarders of the law(like the law against Murder) is to........pass another Law!.....Genius!!!," Hughes wrote. "But before we pass this law 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."
It's not the first time that Gonzalez has faced criticism since coming to prominence for "calling BS" on politicians during a gun control rally in the days after 17 people were killed in the attack on her school.
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Rep. Steve King's (R-Iowa) Facebook page for his campaign took issue with the Cuban flag on Gonzalez's jacket at Saturday's march.
Republican Maine House candidate Leslie Gibson earlier derided Gonzalez as a "skinhead lesbian." He later dropped out of the race amid backlash over the insult.
