GOP governor to kids: Don't protest gun violence, just pray instead

To the average American observer, tens of thousands of students demanding an end to gun violence is an act of courage and inspiration.

But not to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.

McMaster looked at the students who participated in Wednesday’s National Walkout — some as young as 10 years old — and decided to blast the kids for protesting instead of praying.

“What these students should do,” McMaster said, “is to pray, to hope for the families of those who were slain.”

That’s not what the survivors of last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, have asked for, though.

“Your prayers do nothing,” wrote 17-year-old Cameron Kasky after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

Kasky and his fellow survivors have explicitly called for elected officials to take action instead of merely offering thoughts and prayers.

But that’s a message that McMaster didn’t get. Instead of applauding the students’ courageous movement, he accused them of being tools.

“This is a tricky move, I believe, by a left-wing group, from the information I’ve seen, to use these children as a tool to further their own means,” he said without naming the supposed left-wing group or citing his supposed source of information.

It’s the kind of utterly baseless and pathetic smear the right wing has been launching against the activist students since the shooting. Conservative media accused the students of being actors and claimed that David Hogg, one of the most outspoken survivors, was far too “articulate” to be credible.

Those smears spread far and wide and were even endorsed by Donald Trump Jr.

Shortly after conservatives launched their attacks, Hogg’s family started receiving death threats — which still failed to silence him.

To South Carolina’s governor, though, that students are still speaking out instead of merely praying is “shameful.”

“It sounds like a protest to me,” he continued. “It’s not a memorial. It’s certainly not a prayer service. It’s a political statement by a left-wing group, and it’s shameful.”

What’s shameful is the governor’s response. Somehow, he looked at children begging people like him to do something before yet another tragedy takes the lives of their friends and teachers, and told them to stop it and stick to prayer.

Hogg had the perfect response to McMaster.

“Those future voters will not reelect you,” he tweeted. “Can’t wait to see what the history textbooks our generation writes will have to say about people like you.”