Marine Corps Posts ‘Lone Shooter’ Message for MLK Day, Quickly Deletes

On Friday morning, the official account for the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) attempted to make a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day reference in a tweet but failed miserably, leading to a deletion and uproar from its followers.

“Don’t be lone shooter #MLK weekend — make sure you’ve got security!” MARSOC posted to its Twitter and Facebook account, accompanied by a photo of a Marine standing at a window with a short-barrel rifle used for visit, board, search, and seizure operations:

MLK, Jr. was assassinated by a lone shooter — James Earl Ray — aiming from a room across the street.

The tweet and Facebook post were both promptly deleted after followers on both networks complained, BuzzFeed reports. Sample tweets:

@wjrue @MARSOCofficial We've got an early leader for least ok MLK day tweet. Yeesh that's horrible.

— Sam Ratner (@samratner) January 17, 2014

@MARSOCofficial distasteful tweet.

— Alexander Tucciarone (@TucciTellsIt) January 17, 2014

We’ve reached out to MARSOC for comment and will update if and when we hear back.

[h/t BuzzFeed]

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