One of the most vocal survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school shooting has demanded that Florida lawmakers pass tough legislation on assault rifles. David Hoggs says he will not attend school otherwise.
Without mincing his words Hoggs, 17, challenged Florida representatives to pass a single piece of legislation regulating the sale of firearms, calling them “child murderers” during an anti-gun rally in New Jersey. He also sharply criticized Republican Florida governor Rick Scott for not doing enough to prevent the shooting.
“Literally any legislation at this point would be a success. So few legislators in Florida met with us and they want the people to forget [it’s] disgusting. The fact that they want people to forget about this and elect them again as the child murderers they are, that’s unacceptable and we’re not going to let that happen,” he stated, as quoted by New York Daily.
His harsh rebuttal comes days after Florida’s state legislature voted 36-71 against passing House Bill 219 and turned their attention to an anti-porn resolution to the bemusement of protesters and Parkland massacre survivors. The bill would have prohibited the sale of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines and required “certificates of possession” for lawfully-possessed firearms, among other measures.
Twitter users on both sides of the gun debate have manned their social media accounts to respond to his speech, drawing both sympathy and ire from big names across the internet.
African-American Trump supporter CJ Pearson even offered to debate Hoggs. “All students – on both sides of the aisle – deserve to have their voices heard in this debate,” he tweeted.
Others were not so fond of Hogg’s opinionated stance and lambasted him on social media.
Some responders accused Hoggs of being a “scripted kid” working as a useful idiot for CNN.
Seventeen people were killed in the Parkland massacre after an assailant, alleged to be 19 year-old Nikolas Cruz, used an AR-15 assault rifle to gun down his victims on February 14. The tragedy has sparked a fierce debate on gun control and divided American society over the validity of the second amendment as a constitutional right.