David Hogg's Pal Cameron Kasky Ditches Anti-Gunners After Meeting Real Gun Owners
One of the Florida teens who shot to national fame by opposing gun rights after February’s mass shooting in Florida has told Fox News Radio that he’s leaving his anti-gun organization and looking for bipartisanship after meeting responsible gun owners.
Cameron Kasky co-founded an anti-gun group called March for Our Lives after the “March For Our Lives” demonstration in Washington that followed the murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
For a time, Kasky was almost as public a face of the anti-gun movement as David Hogg, the now-Stoneman Douglas graduate who has built his anti-gun stance into national celebrity — or infamy.
In February, Kasky built up his own kind of infamy among supporters of Second Amendment rights when he had the chance to ask Florida Sen. Marco Rubio a question at a CNN town hall, but took the opportunity to attack Rubio personally instead.
“Senator Rubio, it’s hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at (Parkland gunman) Nicholas Cruz, but the point is, you’re here and there some people who are not,” Kasky said.
And Kasky’s anti-gun activities weren’t limited to attacking Rubio.
In May, Kasky’s parents helped him launch an anti-gun super PAC called Families vs. Assault Rifles, to oppose the National Rifle Association, according to the Miami Herald.
“The NRA purchases for cash money political favors,” Kasky said at the time. “That needs to stop.”
However, Kasky is now expressing regret at his past behavior.
He told Fox News Radio in an interview that he had resigned from the March for Our Lives organization and now wants to focus his efforts now on finding common ground.
“I left the March. I’m off the board,” he said in excerpts published Wednesday.
Kasky said the reason for his change of heart was getting to know some actual gun owners.
“This summer, when March For Our Lives went on the summer tour that we embarked on, I met that person in Texas whose got that semi-automatic weapon because that’s how they like to protect their family,” Kasky said in the excerpts of the interview.
“I met the 50 some odd percent of woman who are pro-life, even though I thought it was preposterous that a woman could be pro-life and not pro-choice at the time.”
Now, Kasky is regretting some of his previous behavior.
“I’m very regretful of a lot of the mistakes that I’ve made along the way,” Kasky said. “One of the things I never really did was watch myself.”
In particular, Kasky regretted his comments toward Rubio.
“I went into that wanting less conversation and more to embarrass Rubio and that was my biggest flaw,” Kasky said.
And he’s got a new focus:
“I’m working on some efforts to encourage bipartisanship or at least discussion that is productive and help a lot of people avoid the mistakes that I made,” Kasky said.
The excerpts don’t indicate Kasky has completely abandoned his views on guns, but obviously, exposure to real-life gun owners opened his mind on the subject.
Unlike his anti-gun peers, Kasky seems to be coming around.
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