Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg ignored a simple question about gun control and background checks on CNN’s “New Day” Tuesday and refused to answer directly.
Host Alisyn Camerota asked Hogg if universal background checks would have prevented the February 2018 tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Hogg, however, failed to come up with a clear answer. (RELATED: David Hogg To Enroll At Harvard)
“I think there’s many instances, and instances of gun violence, that could have stopped further acts of gun violence. There’s 40,000 people that die of gun violence every year, and a very small minority of them end up being in school shootings,” he replied. “When we’re talking about hardening our schools and different things, what we’re not talking about is how we’re going to make our communities safer. When we’re talking about school safety, we’re neglecting the thousands of students that die either coming to school or coming back from school everyday, or simply just outside their house.”
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“Our congressmen and our elected officials have said that they don’t care about them or their violence because of the zip code they live in or the number of figures in their bank account,” Hogg continued. “And if we really want to start talking about a national emergency like the president likes to talk about, 40,000 Americans dying annually from gun violence is a pretty damn good one to start out with.”
Hogg then claimed the Parkland shooting could have been prevented, but didn’t provide details on what could have stopped it. He also blamed the NRA for the violence, saying they “benefit” from mass shootings.
“It is an issue that is non-partisan. At least I would hope so, considering the fact that both Democrats and Republicans die from gun violence. Bullets don’t discriminate and neither should our legislators. No legislator should look at these laws and say to themselves, ‘oh I can’t vote on that because I’ve taken campaign contributions from the NRA.’ That’s what they’re thinking,” he said.
“The American people need to wake up and realize again and again, the reason these laws are not getting passed … for example, disarming people like the shooter at our high school could have happened through an extreme risk protection but didn’t, is because that law was actively advocated against by the National Rifle Association. That uses due process to disarm people like terrorists and domestic abusers, but they actively try to stop because it stops these things from happening in the first place, which they benefit from. Because after every single mass shooting, gun sales go up significantly and the NRA benefits from that.”
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