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David Hogg embarrassingly self-owns in Twitter spat

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David Hogg is set to graduate from Harvard soon.

Now, I’ve found the fact that a state college rejects got into Harvard rather hilarious from the get-go. After all, it just goes to show you that the Ivy League ain’t what it used to be.

But how do I know he’s going to graduate soon? Well, it starts on Twitter with a brag and, in time, a hilarious self-own.

The first tweet:

OK, so far, nothing much to see. Of course, I’m sure the NRA is just a-quaking in their boots.

Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake fired back with this one:

And here was David’s response.

Oh, well…that’s…interesting.

You see, what Hogg thought was a mic drop is really a self-own.

That particular image isn’t the aftermath of a mass shooting, bodies piled in the grass because there’s nowhere else to put the dead.

It’s a protest.

Over 1100 black “body bags” fanned out over a section of grass on the National Mall in Washington D.C. on March 24 in a plea for sanity. Each represented roughly 150 individuals who have died from gun violence since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14, 2018 which left 17 people dead and 17 more injured – most of the victims in their teens.

The body bags were placed to spell out the words “THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS” and were directed toward members of Congress of both parties for their reluctance to pass meaningful gun control measures. The phrase “thoughts and prayers” is often used by government officials as an expression of condolence following a mass shooting. Many Gun control activists have deemed it a meaningless gesture.

It was the 4-year anniversary of the original “March For Our Lives” protest march in D.C. —  the largest single day of protest against gun violence ever. The young organizers of the 2018 March led by Parkland survivor David Hogg were behind the current display.

So Hogg can’t even claim he didn’t know it was part of a protest.

Now, why is this a self-own?

Because protesting is protected by the Bill of Rights. David’s comment, “This is the ‘freedom’ you are fighting for” is absolutely correct, but not for the reason he’s trying to claim.

Most Second Amendment advocates also support the rest of the Bill of Rights. They kind of have to, really. That means that yes, we are also fighting for the freedom to pile body bags on the national mall to protest things we personally disagree with.

What was intended to be some mic drop is no such thing because, well, why wouldn’t someone support the right to protest?

Granted, Hogg has been attending Harvard and the Ivy League hasn’t been huge on free speech, but a lot of people still like it.

More than that, though, our defense of the Second Amendment is in part motivated by our desire to maintain all of our freedoms. Yes, the freedom to protest is included.

So yeah, David, that is the freedom I’m fighting for, and I’m damn proud of it.

My question is why isn’t that the freedom you are fighting for?

David Hogg has an un-dumb take on guns for a change

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David Hogg has kind of become a favorite punching bag among pro-gun voices. After all, let’s take a nice, long look at his history of saying really stupid things. He’s kind of brought all of that on himself.

But there is a saying about blind squirrels and acorns.

In practicality, most gun control advocates are too busy avoiding what you and I would call “acorns” for these purposes for the phrase to apply, but David managed to stump upon on.

Hat tip to our sister site Townhall.

Now, I have an issue with research, because we’ve seen some of the problems with this research. If we could get serious, unbiased research that looked for answers and not excuses for more gun control, I’d be down.

But the rest of this tweet is…shockingly reasonable.

He’s right, there’s no way to round up 400 million firearms even if the government went door-to-door. They might get a lot of them, but not all of them, so yeah, trying to even consider something like that is a waste of time.

Further, I’m totally on board with discussing mental health efforts to reduce the number of suicides. I’m not going to differentiate between “gun suicides” and other suicides because I think that’s ridiculous. Killing yourself is killing yourself. No one feels better that you didn’t shoot yourself.

Seriously, this is reasonable.

A later tweet may be more interesting, though.

Honestly, I can respect this, too.

Granted, Hogg may just be thinking he can convince others to support some level of gun control or there may be something else at work, but he’s reaching out to find common ground, and based on the other tweet, he’s talking outside of gun control.

I’m genuinely surprised to see this because Hogg’s brand has been very much about being an anti-gun firebrand. This is a reasonable approach that might actually accomplish something. Especially if he really has any influence with the gun control side of things.

Imagine if we didn’t have to fight over non-gun control interventions. Think about a place where we could address mental health problems without there being some battle over how we’re deflecting from the problem.

We’re not giving up ground on guns. Maybe Hogg sees that and is instead willing to turn his attention toward more productive efforts.

Or maybe this is just a sham to look like the reasonable guy for some purpose or another.

I honestly don’t know, but it’s nice to see a prominent gun control advocate stepping up to reach across the proverbial aisle to talk with us about non-gun control solutions rather than to “reach across” in an effort to browbeat someone into giving up our Second Amendment rights.

Will this version of Hogg stick? I honestly don’t know.

I have reached out to him. I don’t know if he’ll respond–he didn’t promise he’d get to everyone, after all–but if he does, I’ll probably share that conversation. Who knows, maybe I can talk him into having a conversation on Cam & Co.

That would be interesting to watch, to say the least.

David Hogg double downs on warped understanding of Second Amendment

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On Monday, Cam wrote about how David Hogg basically tried to rewrite the Second Amendment. That tweet pretty much illustrated his lack of understanding about the right, the history surrounding that right, or pretty much anything else.

But, then again, it’s David Hogg. What do you expect?

Well, he opted to double down instead of just letting his stupid comments mellow for a bit.

So, the Founding Fathers intended for the states to have a National Guard, which is part of the federal Department of Defense as well as answering to state governors, something that actually did not exist in the 18th century, and not protecting an individual right to keep and bear arms at all.

Hogg’s take on this isn’t unique. I’ve seen others try to make this case, even one very recently, which I slammed on Monday.

It’s not unique, but it’s still idiotic.

What’s more, it’s insane. See, by this statement, Hogg is basically saying if anyone wants to handle a gun, they need to be part of the military, even if it’s the National Guard.

One might wonder how the police factor into this particular equation.

After all, law enforcement isn’t part of the military, despite having ranks similar to the Army or Marines. They’re civilians–though, admittedly, many are part of some reserve component of the military–so do they get to have guns under Hogg’s scheme?

Perhaps more interestingly, if they’re not, just how am I supposed to call them and expect them to deal with the home invader if they don’t have guns with which they can shoot back at the bad guy?

For someone who goes to Harvard, he’s making a hell of a case for why he was rejected by state college, isn’t he?

While Hogg and many like him love to claim that the individualist interpretation of the Second Amendment is modern, the truth is that if you look throughout American history, the reality is that there’s little to no evidence for this claim. You simply cannot find it cropping up in writings from the time of the nation’s founding until the 20th century when it suddenly pops up and is taken as truth.

This is revisionist history in the making.

Of course the Second Amendment was an individual right, despite mentioning militias. In those days, members of the militia provided their own weapons. There was no concept that the government would provide weapons to militia members. They viewed part of the national defense–remember, they were also distrustful of standing armies–being that private individuals would bring their private firearms to defend the country.

This idea that no, they actually meant the National Guard is perhaps the dumbest thing I’ve read from a guy who says a lot of stupid stuff. What’s more, he tends to lack any original thought, even on the subject he professes to be so passionate about, and this is no different.

Hogg is peddling misinformation, though I think he actually believes what he’s saying.

Whatever state college he applied to dodged a bullet.

David Hogg tries to rewrite the Second Amendment out of history

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Honestly, if it was just someone like David Hogg making this argument on social media, I probably would have just ignored his tweets from Sunday evening. But in the wake of the Bruen decision the anti-gun left is making a renewed push to claim the Supreme Court is getting the Second Amendment all wrong; that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is actually a right of the states to form a militia, and one that’s utterly out of date now that we have the National Guard.

It’s a ridiculous argument, and one that’s easily countered by the weight of historical evidence; from Pennsylvania’s 1776 and 1790 state constitution protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms “in defense of themselves and the state” to James Madison’s assertion in Federalist 46 that the United States, unlike European monarchies, were not afraid “to trust the people with arms”. On Sunday evening, thre were plenty of Second Amendment supporters offering up additional counters to Hogg’s invented history.

If Hogg and his fellow prohibitionists wanted to take an honest approach to eradicating the right to keep and bear arms, they’d be trying to repeal the Second Amendment. But because there’s virtually no chance that the American people would ever back repeal they’re left arguing that the Second Amendment doesn’t mean what it says, that it was never seen as protecting an individual right until the 1960s or 70s, and that instead of outright repeal all that’s necessary is to overturn the Court’s decision in Heller. Once that’s done, the right will supposedly disappear… though Hogg never did say what he thought would happen with the roughly 400-million firearms in the hands of we the people afterwards. Guess they haven’t gotten around to discussing that in his classes at Harvard yet, but I’m sure if they do he’ll quickly be parroting the talking points of his professors.

David Hogg: Activists should go after guns like cigarettes

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Anti-gun activist David Hogg has a bad habit of saying things that make absolutely no sense, especially when it comes to his activism.

Part of that is that he started young and immediately was elevated to the top of the heap. He never had to pay any dues and work his way up with literally anything, so he never got some of the worst ideas out of his system.

Now, with the anniversary of Parkland upon us, he’s getting the spotlight once again. Once again, he’s saying silly things.

Parkland gun control activist David Hogg believes the gun control lobby can succeed in restricting the Second Amendment if everyone will come together and target guns the way anti-tobacco activists targeted cigarettes.

Hogg was interviewed by CBS News on February 12, where he talked of how gun rights groups such as the NRA have often appeared unbeatable. But he believes the gun control lobby can succeed by taking cues from the anti-tobacco movement.

He said, “The tobacco industry is exactly the model that I think of in terms of the decades of work that it will take to address this issue.”

Brilliant, except this isn’t original or even intelligent.

The truth is that this only sounds like a good idea to Hogg because he really doesn’t get guns on any level. The tobacco industry hid studies that showed their products were bad for people, continuing to market a product that was killing its customers as if there were no harmful side effects of that product.

Guns are different.

Let’s start with the fact that everyone knows guns are dangerous. They may misunderstand the danger, but few would say there’s no danger from firearms. The firearms industry has done nothing to hide that. In fact, their marketing–the same marketing that’s being vilified by people like Hogg, I should add–actually makes that kind of clear.

Another difference between tobacco and guns is that I’ve never heard of a single incident where a cigarette saved someone’s life.

Oh, we’ve heard the jokes about how someone smoked so they didn’t kill someone, but I’m being serious here. No one has ever had their life saved by a cigarette so far as I’m aware. If it’s happened, it’s rare as hen’s teeth, so it’s little more than an anomaly, not something tobacco can really be credited for.

Guns, on the other hand, have. Millions of people every year use a gun to defend human life.

That means that no matter how much you want to treat the two industries the same, they’re anything but. Tobacco cannot be used to any significant degree without major health problems. Guns can.

But it’s funny, because while Hogg likes to pretend he doesn’t want to ban guns, he’s sure acting like someone who doesn’t recognize the beneficial side of firearms. Nothing in this sounds like someone who recognizes that guns serve a valid purpose in people’s lives.

Then again, that wouldn’t advance his cause. So, he’ll try and propose a way forward so that he can sound smart and clever to his anti-gun buddies, but David Hogg doesn’t want to go down this road too hard. If so, the boy is going to find himself seriously embarrassed.