Oliver North, the disgraced Reagan administration staffer turned right-wing commentator who was recently tapped to lead the NRA, is already off to a running start at his new gig — smearing anti-gun activists like the Parkland high school protesters as criminals.

"There are people running in fear from what happened down in Parkland thinking that the NRA is on its heels — it’s not. What we have to do is assure them that being associated with the NRA is a good thing for their re-election chances. It’s a positive thing," North told The Washington Times in an interview published on Friday. His comment about "what happened down in Parkland" refers not only to the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day but to the mass protest movement being led by many of the survivors of that shooting.

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As North made clear, he has a dim view of those protesters.

"They call them activists. That’s what they’re calling themselves. They’re not activists — this is civil terrorism. This is the kind of thing that’s never been seen against a civil rights organization in America," North told the Times.

North also told the Times that anti-gun advocates "can do all the cyberwar against us — they’re doing it. They can use the media against us — they are. They’ve gone after our bank accounts, our finances, our donors, and obviously individual members. It’s got to stop. And that’s why the leadership invited me to become the next president of the NRA."

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The Parkland protesters have been repeatedly mocked by conservatives since they emerged on the scene. As Matt Gertz of Media Matters told Salon in March, "I think conservatives view themselves as having little option but to try to take on these kids. They know these students are incredibly good on television. They’re good messengers for the gun violence prevention movement and they’re getting a lot of attention."

It is worth noting that this kind of detached-from-reality rhetoric is very much baked into the NRA's political brand. Prior to the 1970s, the NRA was mostly known as a sportsmen's club, one that had even supported certain types of gun control during the 1930s. After right-wing radicals seized the NRA during a convention in 1977, however, the organization became a hotbed for extreme beliefs — all of them united in the conviction that the government, and liberals in general, are determined to seize NRA members' guns and in general victimize them.

That air of victimization was apparent when North actually compared the experiences of NRA supporters to those of America's most persecuted minority groups.

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"You go back to the terrible days of Jim Crow and those kinds of things — even there you didn’t have this kind of thing," North told the Times. Perhaps realizing how he just sounded, he clarified that "we didn’t have the cyberwar kind of thing that we’ve got today."

He also depicted the Parkland school survivors as being pawns in a larger propaganda effort.

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"What they did very successfully with a frontal assault, and now intimidation and harassment and lawbreaking, is they confused the American people. Our job is to get the straight story out about what happened there, and to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen again because the proper things are being done with the advocacy of the NRA," North told the Times.

There are two reasons why the "straight story" may be somewhat difficult for North to communicate. The first is that, throughout most of American history, the notion that gun regulation would automatically violate the Constitution was a fringe belief. When the Second Amendment was written, it was to make it possible for white men (the only people allowed to own guns at that time) to serve in militias. Although courts were often conflicted as to how much government regulation would be constitutionally acceptable, the absolutist approach that is supported by the NRA had not yet drowned out all other perspectives.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Oliver North isn't an ordinary conservative commentator. He became famous due to the Iran-Contra scandal, during which he used an intermediary to sell weapons to Iran, with the proceeds then being used to help a right-wing political group known as the Contras in Nicaragua. North was eventually convicted of three charges, although those convictions were vacated by a court due to the possibility that witnesses may have been influenced by North's congressional testimony.

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Yet although North depicts the Iran-Contra scandal as ancient history, the fact that he had been involved in arming the right-wing Contras says a great deal about his worldview. From his time as a regular on Fox News (which is now over) to his early statements on behalf of the NRA, it is clear that North conceives of himself as a warrior fighting for sacred causes. This probably goes a long way toward explaining why NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre described North thusly when announcing his appointment:

Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader. In these times, I can think of no one better suited to serve as our president.

While North's services on behalf of "freedom" are questionable at best, he is indeed skilled in the arts of rhetoric and leadership. Between that and his long history of shady right-wing activities — including his recent statements vilifying protesters who merely wish to save lives — he is indeed someone ideally suited to serve as the NRA's president.