Progressives have found a new boogie man to accuse as complicit in the Parkland school shootings. Now it’s the school’s JROTC, with help from . . . you guessed it. . . the NRA.

After all, the JROTC taught young Nikolas Cruz to kill, and the NRA funded his training. Or so their logic goes.

According to Think Progress, Cruz was a member of a four-person marksmanship team at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School; the team was a part of the school’s JROTC program. Moreover, the evil NRA donated $10K to that JROTC in 2016, which is particularly heinous, since the NRA should’ve predicted that Cruz would shoot up the school in 2018.

Furthermore, Think Progress also found it scandalous that not only did Cruz train with air rifles, but he aimed at targets “the size of a coin.”

So what the hell do they think marksmanship training involves? Aiming Super Soakers at barn doors?

And it wasn’t just Think Progress that spun the NRA link. The New York Daily News used this clickbait on its Saturday front page about the NRA training Cruz through a “gun group.”

The Florida shooting suspect was on an NRA-funded school rifle team https://t.co/6pZqrtZMRD

An early look at Saturday's front… pic.twitter.com/kqi7fd6G9J

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 17, 2018

Now I’ll say up front here that I am not a member of the NRA, and neither is my husband, who is the gun owner in our home. I don’t care for lobbyist groups in general — yes, I know that’s the way Washington works. But that’s just me.

However, it’s particularly despicable for the NYDN and Think Progress to somehow blame the JROTC for training this kid to be a shooter. Because you know what other members of the JROTC at Marjory Stoneman did on the day of the shooting?

This:

Who else would’ve thought to use Kevlar as shields? The art teacher?

On top of that, one young member of the JROTC lost his life defending his fellow students. Fifteen-year-old Peter Wang was shot by Cruz while he was holding a door open, allowing other students to escape before him.

The horrible events of this past week have rubbed our national nerves raw, and it’s especially evident now in our highly-polarized country. But to smear the JROTC for accepting NRA funds for its program is — what’s Hillary Clinton’s favorite word? Oh, deplorable. Especially since some of that group’s members saved lives, and one even gave his own life to save others. So here’s a big cup of STFU to Think Progress and the New York Daily News.