By now, you’re likely familiar with David Hogg, the survivor of the tragic Parkland, Fla., shooting who has since become a prominent gun-control activist. If you follow him closely, you’re also likely aware that while Hogg still deserves our sympathy, his anti-gun rhetoric is so outrageous that he shouldn’t be taken seriously.
The activist’s absurdity is on display once again this week, as he takes his #resistance to the steps of the U.S. Capitol to protest the confirmation hearing of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Never mind that Judge Kavanaugh received the highest possible rating from the American Bar Association, holds two degrees from Yale, and has served for more than a decade on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals with distinction.
According to Hogg, none of that matters — because the constitutionalist Kavanaugh supports the Second Amendment, his confirmation to the Supreme Court would supposedly lead to the deaths of thousands. But upon closer examination, Hogg’s hysteria falls apart.
Most pictures are worth a thousand words…
This picture is worth thousands of lives call your senators now and tell them to not appoint Kavanaugh 202-224-3121
The NRA has spent millions of dollars to appoint Kavanaugh it’s going to take 1000s of phone calls to stop this man. pic.twitter.com/R2h65VQs4k
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) September 4, 2018
Hogg’s biggest attack against Kavanaugh stems from one encounter from the first day of his confirmation hearings, where Fred Guttenberg, the father of a Parkland victim, approached Kavanaugh and attempted to shake his hand. On video, Kavanaugh appears to snub the advance and turns away. Guttenberg subsequently took his outrage to Twitter, and went viral for his claim that Kavanaugh “did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence.”
The Parkland activists doubled down on this line of attack. Hogg called Kavanaugh “a disgrace to this nation,” and his fellow Parkland-survivor-turned-activist Emma Gonzalez said, “Mr. Kavanaugh, 4-year-olds have better manners than you.”
Yet when you look at what actually happened, it’s clear that these activists are inventing outrage to advance their agenda. Guttenberg deserves our sympathy, but he isn’t exactly a household name, and it’s unreasonable to expect Judge Kavanaugh to have known who he was or to have stopped and shaken hands with everyone he came across during what was a raucous confirmation hearing (70 protesters were arrested on day one). Beyond that, you can clearly see on the video that security personnel pulled Kavanaugh away from Guttenberg.
The reality is that Hogg and his fellow crusaders don’t actually care about a handshake — they’re simply mortified by the prospect of a judge joining the Supreme Court who is willing to enforce the Second Amendment as written. Hogg admitted as much in a tweet, imploring people to lobby their senators to vote against Kavanaugh, because “Gun violence prevention is on the line.”
call your Senators right now and tell them to stop Kavanaugh
-Roe v Wade is on the line
-Gun violence prevention is on the line
-Our future is on the line
Call your Senators and tell them to not appoint Kavanaugh(202) 224-3121
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) September 4, 2018
Except it isn’t. What’s on the line is Hogg’s extreme gun control agenda, much of which a Justice Kavanaugh would likely strike down if it ever became law, keeping with Second Amendment precedent and an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. Yet we can’t allow activists like Hogg to obfuscate their agenda with the prevention of violence. The things they propose, like raising the age to buy a gun to 21 or a ban on semi-automatic weapons, would do nothing to stop gun violence, but everything to restrict the rights of everyday people.
An increased age limit is easy to overcome for a determined school shooter. After all, any average college student with a friend or family member over the age of 21 can circumvent the drinking age with ease, so the same would be no less true with Hogg’s gun control proposal. Why do you think the Columbine shooters purchased guns from an older friend? Or that the Newtown shooter used guns purchased by his mother?
Beyond that, a ban on the sale of semi-automatic weapons would do nothing to stop a would-be shooter from getting his hands on one. It wouldn’t remove from circulation the 15 million AR-15s already out there that a shooter could easily illegally purchase or steal. A ban also wouldn’t stop illegal arms trafficking any more than any other law stops the flow of drugs, immigrants, or weapons into the country. So it still wouldn’t be difficult for a determined shooter to obtain a dangerous weapon, even if Hogg’s crusade was successful.
Yet banning semi-automatics would disarm those of us that abide by the law, so Hogg’s idea that a judge opposed to such restrictions would be a threat to thousands of lives is quickly dismantled by the facts. After all, according to the Institute for Medicine, guns are used in self-defense up to 3 million times every year, but only around 300,000 actual crimes annually involve firearms.
Similar inconsistencies undercut almost all of Hogg’s proposals. Maybe that’s why he’s had to stoop to a smear campaign to stop try and #StopKavanaugh.
Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) is a contributor to Red Alert Politics. He is an assistant editor for Young Voices and a student at UMass Amherst.
