Yesterday, NRA TV released an interview with rapper Killer Mike in which he talked about being an NRA member and why he believes it’s important for black Americans to own guns. It was the sort of thing that would’ve been controversial any day, since the NRA is evil and it seems absurd to support it for anyone to support it for any reason, but yesterday also happened to be the day of the March For Our Lives events happening across the country to protest gun violence and the NRA. That made the interview seem like an obvious attempt from the NRA to distract from the protests and to legitimize its platform by using a popular and progressive guy like Killer Mike, but he seemed to reject that argument at the time and defended his position on social media.
Today, though, Killer Mike has shared a pair of new videos in which he explains that he actually supported the message behind March For Our Lives and that he didn’t know the NRA would purposefully hold his interview until that day in particular. He says March For Our Lives is a “noble campaign,” and he apologized to the young people behind the movement for allowing his interview to be used “as a weapon.” Addressing those young people directly, he said that the way the interview was released “was unfair to you and it was wrong, and it disparaged some very noble work you’re doing.”