Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor and gun control activist David Hogg said Monday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that people bought guns because they “fear” other people’s skin color, immigration status, or sexual identity.
Anchor Alisyn Camerota said, “I know you’ve been trying to get our attention about this for the past three years. It’s not only gun violence going up. It’s gun purchasing. So in just the past year, 2020, nearly 23 million gun sales across the United States. That is up 65% over the years before. Then in January, OK, after the insurrection at the Capital, there were two million gun sales. That is up 75% compared to January before. What’s that about to you?”
Hogg said, “I think it’s about fear. I think it’s about the fact that as a country often times we would rather, unfortunately, turn on each other and point to someone’s skin color or point to someone’s immigration status or gender, or sexual identity and claim that’s the threat when in reality we should all together against the sources of evil creating this gun violence and the injustice that promotes this gun violence and gun purchases in the first place.”
He added, “Because the reality is what’s going to help solve the situation is not somebody buying another AR-15 or another gun. It’s all of us working together to change the political system and the corruption and system of loopholes that bought us to this place where a corporate lobby essentially like the NRA is able to put such a chokehold on our elected officials that they let thousands of Americans die every year simply because they are more afraid of what the NRA will do in the next election than whether or not there is a school shooting in the community or everyday act of violence.”
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