NOFX have issued a full apology for their Las Vegas shooting comments

Written by Tyler Jenke on 4th June, 2018

NOFX have issued a full apology for their controversial comments made last week in regards to victims of 2017’s Las Vegas shooting, which saw the group lose sponsorships and even resulted in them being booted from their own music festival.

While performing at Las Vegas’ Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival on May 27th, NOFX made a controversial joke following one of their songs which saw frontman Fat Mike remarking, “We played a song about Muslims and we didn’t get shot,” before guitarist Eric Melvin responded, “Man, I’d say getting shot in Vegas… I mean if you’re a country band,”

Fat Mike retorts by saying “That sucked, but at least they were country fans and not punk rock fans,” which caused many in the crowd to audibly boo and groan at the tastelessness of the joke.

NOFX thought it would be "hilarious" to joke about the October 1 shootings while on stage in Las Vegas. They said "at least they were country fans and not punk rock fans". This is disgusting and callous. We will never support anything involving this band ever again. pic.twitter.com/am3R8QJIE6
— Dave and Mahoney (@DaveAndMahoney) May 30, 2018

Understandably, the backlash over these comments was instantaneous, with many longtime fans even admitting that the group crossed the line. Soon, Stone Brewing Co., the sponsor behind NOFX’s own Punk In Drublic festival, revealed they were cutting ties with the band, and both the group and Fat Mike’s other band, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, were even booted from the festival lineup in the days afterward.

On Thursday, the group shared a post on social media in which they stated they were going to formally apologise for their comments, stating, “we decided we will all get together to discuss and write an in depth, sincere, and honest apology because that’s what the people we offended and hurt deserve.”

Now, over a week since the incident, NOFX have taken to social media to share an official apology, stating that they “crossed the line of civility”.

“There’s no place here to backpedal. What NOFX said in Vegas was shameful,” the post began. “We crossed the line of civility. We can’t write songs about how people in this world need to be more decent, when we were clearly being indecent.”

“Las Vegas has always been a welcoming city to our band, and to make light of the tragedy that occurred there was egregious.”

“All members of the band would like to sincerely apologize to anyone who experienced loss from the Vegas shooting 8 months ago, and to anyone who was at our show who lost a loved one or a friend, or who had to witness the incredibly senseless violence that night.”

There’s no place here to backpedal. What NOFX said in Vegas was shameful. We crossed the line of civility. We can’t write songs about how people in this world need to be more decent, when we were clearly being indecent. Las Vegas has always been a welcoming city to our band, and to make light of the tragedy that occurred there was egregious. All members of the band would like to sincerely apologize to anyone who experienced loss from the Vegas shooting 8 months ago, and to anyone who was at our show who lost a loved one or a friend, or who had to witness the incredibly senseless violence that night. We were asked why we didn’t release an immediate apology. Well, we didn’t feel that we could write a sincere apology without reflecting on the actual damage we had done. No press agent was gonna write this for us. That’s why we have struggled with this for the past few days. We didn’t plan or intend on saying anything so insensitive. It was off the cuff, but just as hurtful. We won’t blame it on drugs or alcohol or Ambien. That’s too easy. NOFX said it, and we own it. We made a tasteless joke. But to be clear, NOFX does not condone violence against ANY group of people, period! As sincere as we’ve ever been, NOFX
A post shared by NOFX (@nofx) on Jun 3, 2018 at 11:00am PDT

“We were asked why we didn’t release an immediate apology. Well, we didn’t feel that we could write a sincere apology without reflecting on the actual damage we had done. No press agent was gonna write this for us. That’s why we have struggled with this for the past few days.”

“We didn’t plan or intend on saying anything so insensitive,” they continued. “It was off the cuff, but just as hurtful. We won’t blame it on drugs or alcohol or Ambien. That’s too easy. NOFX said it, and we own it. We made a tasteless joke. But to be clear, NOFX does not condone violence against ANY group of people, period!”

58 people were killed in the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting in Las Vegas on October 1st, 2017, leading to it being named as the deadliest mass shooting by a single individual in US history.