American gun rights activist
Collins Iyare Idehen Jr.[3] (born 1983), better known as Colion Noir, is an American gun rights activist, lawyer, and host of the web series NOIR. He has over 121 million views[4] and over 1,000,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel as of September 2019.[5]
In 2013, the National Rifle Association (NRA) recruited him to appear in NRA News videos in subsequent months.[4] Later that year, he appeared at its convention in Houston.[2][6] Since then, he has become the NRA's "most prominent black commentator," as The Guardian described him in 2017.[7] As of July 2019, Noir is no longer associated with the NRA since they changed to a different advertising agency.[8]
Noir was born Collins Iyare Idehen Jr. An only child, his parents were an executive chef and a registered nurse, both of whom immigrated to the United States from Nigeria.[3] He spent his formative years in Houston, Texas.[2]
Noir graduated from high school in Houston. He went on to earn a political science degree from the University of Houston and a J.D. degree from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, also in Houston.[2] He first became interested in firearms while a student at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.[7]
Noir founded a website which blogs about second amendment issues, and sells merchandise.[9]
In 2018, Noir said, of teenagers set to speak at a Capitol Mall demonstration against gun violence after the killings of 17 students and staff at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that:
I wish a hero like Blaine Gaskill had been at Marjory Douglas High School last month because your classmates would still be alive and no one would know your names, because the media would have completely and utterly ignored your story, the way they ignored his.[10]