Kyle Kashuv | |
|---|---|
 Kashuv in 2018 | |
| Born | May 20, 2001 [1] |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School |
| Years active | 2018–present |
| Height | 5 ft 11 in (180 cm) [2] |
Kyle Kashuv (born May 20, 2001) is an American conservative activist. [3] He survived the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and subsequently advocated for gun rights, notably in opposition to his fellow survivors' March for Our Lives movement. [4] [5]
On February 14, 2018, Kashuv was present at the school where the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting occurred. He was 16 years old, attending his junior year. [6] [7] [8] He later petitioned President Donald Trump to award Peter Wang, a student who had helped several others escape before he was killed, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. [9]
In April 2018, Kashuv said he was questioned and intimidated by a Broward County officer and a school security officer after he posted on his Twitter account a photo of himself at a shooting range with an AR-15 rifle. Kashuv explained that he wanted to learn the "physical mechanics" of guns and how to defend himself, as well as to "show people it's people that are the issue, not guns". [10] [11] Marjory Stoneman Douglas High history teacher Greg Pittman said the gesture was in poor taste, which Kashuv denied. [11] He said other students told him that Pittman called him the "next Hitler" while discussing the photo. [12]
Kashuv is a supporter of the Republican Party. He supported Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election, [13] endorsing Trump's ideas about immigration, the Trump wall, and Trump's "America First" approach. [8] Kashuv was initially guided by conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Guy Benson. [14] Kashuv also worked for Ron DeSantis's campaign in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election. [14] [15] By March 2018, Kashuv was in the process of producing a mobile phone application, ReachOut, which aims to help students who have emotional struggles reach out for help. [5] [16] In April 2018, Kashuv criticized CNN for being biased because one of their contributors, Joan Walsh, had liked a tweet by Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter died in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. [17] In July 2018, Kashuv gave a speech at the 2018 National Western Conservative Summit. [18] Kashuv also gave a speech in April 2019 at the yearly meeting of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA). [19]
The Miami Herald in July 2018 wrote that the conservative Second Amendment supporter Kashuv had "gained a national following as a counterweight to the March For Our Lives" movement. [14] Associated Press in February 2019 described Kashuv as "the most prominent conservative voice among the students" who had survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. [15] As of June 2019, Kashuv has amassed over 300,000 followers on Twitter. [20]
Kashuv became director of high school outreach of the conservative [14] group Turning Point USA and gave speeches about gun rights, including at Princeton University. [21] Kashuv invited Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk to address Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, but the school did not permit the activity. [22] Kashuv helped to plan the organization's 2018 High School Leadership Summit for over 800 students, and was lauded by Fox News in July 2018 as "a role model for young conservatives across the country". [23] That month, Kirk described Kashuv as a "a national spokesperson for one of the most controversial and divisive issues of our time", and as "probably the most hated pro-gun advocate at the time besides Dana Loesch", a spokesperson of the NRA. [14] [18]
He resigned from Turning Point in May 2019, [24] hours after former classmates threatened to make public screenshots of racist remarks Kashuv had made. [25] [26] Kashuv denied that his resignation was related to his racist remarks. [6]
Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Michael Gruen, a 19-year old "influencer marketer", noticed Kashuv's posts on Twitter and approached him offering to help him get his message out. With the help of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, meetings on Capitol Hill were set up for Kashuv in March 2018. The trip was mostly planned on short notice, with Kashuv reacting: "I never really wanted to get into politics." [7] [8] During his visit, Kashuv met with President Trump and his wife Melania Trump, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, two Democratic senators (Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer), three Republican senators (Orrin Hatch, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz), Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, and CNN's Jim Acosta. [5] [8]
In April 2018, Kashuv met with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and discussed their support for the Second Amendment. [27] [28]
Kashuv supports the Second Amendment. [29] Before the mass shooting, Kashuv supported zero gun restrictions, but after the mass shooting, Kashuv changed his position to favor much "stricter background checks and mental evaluations" for gun purchases, but still disagrees with banning any type of gun. [13] [30] He also does not support restrictions on standard capacity magazines. Regarding the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Kashuv did not blame gun laws, instead blaming the failures of law enforcement for failing to either stop the gunman during the shooting, or even identify the gunman as a threat before the shooting happened. Kashuv endorses the idea that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"; [31] he has advocated for schools to eliminate gun-free zones, and for policies allowing teachers and school staff to be armed. [18] Kashuv supports the Senate's bipartisan STOP School Violence Act, which provides federal funds to develop an "anonymous reporting systems for threats of school violence", improve "school security infrastructure", and train students, school staff and law enforcement to prevent violence. [32]
Kashuv said he agrees with fellow student activists David Hogg, Cameron Kasky and Emma González that gun deaths and school shootings need to be stopped, "and that shouldn't be delegitimized, ever". Kashuv's stated solutions to improve the situation differ from Hogg and Kasky's, but he has called for a debate with them to find "common middle ground". Kashuv has also said he felt frustrated that he was not invited to speak at the March for Our Lives event, [7] [14] [31] [33] suggesting it was because of his political views. Kashuv has described himself as speaking "calmly and logically" in contrast to "inflammatory language" used by other student activists. [34] Kashuv believed that the "initial movement, in its purest form" coming out of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting "was amazing". He said that "It got corrupted because now it's represented as anti-gun and anti-NRA." [35] He described March for Our Lives as being "anti-Republican" and said that the NRA does not have as much "evil power" over politicians as their critics believe. [4] Kashuv himself was criticized by the students in Never Again MSD for his views on gun rights. [11]
In late March 2018, Kashuv was criticized online by Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald. [36] In response, Kashuv called for a boycott of MSNBC, since Eichenwald had stated that he was an MSNBC contributor on his Twitter biography, [37] although Eichenwald had actually not been an MSNBC contributor since a month prior. [17] One of MSNBC's sponsors, Proactiv, removed its advertisements from the network in response. [38]
Eichenwald apologized to Kashuv, claiming that his criticism of Kashuv was a case of mistaken identity because he had taken Kashuv to be another teenager who had frequently insulted him before. Kashuv accepted Eichenwald's apology. [37] [17]
In April 2018, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro published emails Eichenwald sent to him which included a statement that Kashuv was "in desperate need of psychiatric help". In those emails, Eichenwald stated that he was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair , but Vanity Fair issued a statement saying that Eichenwald was not a contributor at the time. [37] [17]
Kashuv's parents emigrated to the United States from Israel in the 1990s before he was born. He grew up in Parkland, Florida. [8] Kashuv considers himself to be politically conservative. [32] He and his parents are Jewish. [6] [39] In 2019, he said he pays weekly visits to the synagogue. [6]
In April 2018, a student at Lincoln Southeast High School in Lincoln, Nebraska, who admired Kashuv for expressing views about gun rights contrary to so many of his classmates, asked Kashuv to her prom. Kashuv turned her down until she received more than 5,000 re-tweets of her posting with the help of Ben Shapiro. Kashuv did not have a tuxedo or airplane fare to get to Nebraska, so she set up a GoFundMe account, which raised the necessary money in two hours. Kashuv accompanied her to her prom, and met with Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts. [40] [41] [42]
Several of Kashuv's classmates complained on social media and to the press regarding Kashuv's alleged use of inflammatory and racist comments, including racial slurs against African-Americans. [6] [24] Kashuv was accused by his classmates of hypocrisy when he criticized Bill Nye for using vulgarities in a skit regarding climate change on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (Nye had declared: "The planet's on fucking fire!"), stating that Nye "looked like a joke". [26] [43]
Screenshots of a Google Doc for a class study guide showed Kashuv writing the n-word multiple times, discussing "JEWISH SLAVES", and declaring that he would "fucking make a CSOG [ sic ] map of Douglas and practice" (in a supposed reference to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive shooter game and Stoneman Douglas High School). Text messages also reportedly showed Kashuv rating a female student "7/10" and stating that she "goes for niggerjocks". [24] [43] [44]
On May 22, 2019, Kashuv released a statement about the screenshots and the comments within, admitting to writing the comments when he was 16 years old before the mass shooting occurred. [45] Kashuv called his comments "offensive", "idiotic" and "inflammatory" and that the mass shooting changed him as a person. [46] [47] In an interview with The New York Times , Kashuv said that the comments on the Google Doc were made late at night, and that he had "said a bunch of anti-Semitic stuff". [6] On June 17, 2019, Kashuv stated that the comments were made "months before the shooting", [48] and also said that Harvard University had rescinded its offer of admission as a result of the remarks. [49] Kashuv published a letter by Harvard, which stated that they had considered "the qualities of maturity and moral character" in their decision. [50] Kashuv has accused unidentified political opponents of having urged Harvard not to accept him. [51]
Kashuv has said he would have to reapply to other colleges because it was too late to accept other offers. He had originally intended to take a gap year before matriculating into Harvard. [6]
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is a public high school in Parkland, Florida, United States. It was established in 1990 and is part of the Broward County Public Schools district. It is named after the writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas and is the only public high school in Parkland, serving almost all of the limits of that city as well as a section of Coral Springs.
Alfonso Calderón Atienzar is a Spanish-American student activist against gun violence. He is a survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and a founding member of the Never Again MSD movement.
On February 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Miami suburban town of Parkland, Florida, United States, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. Cruz, a former student at the school, fled the scene on foot by blending in with other students and was arrested without incident approximately one hour and twenty minutes later in nearby Coral Springs. Police and prosecutors investigated "a pattern of disciplinary issues and unnerving behavior".
X González is an American activist and advocate for gun control. In 2018, they survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, and, in response, co-founded the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD.
Never Again MSD is an American student-led political action committee for gun control that advocates for tighter regulations to prevent gun violence. The organization, also known by the Twitter hashtags #NeverAgain, and #EnoughIsEnough, was formed by a group of twenty students attending Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) at the time of the deadly shooting in 2018, in which seventeen students and staff members were killed by gunman, Nikolas Cruz, who was a 19-year-old former student of the school and was armed with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle. The organization started on social media as a movement "for survivors of the Stoneman Douglas Shooting, by survivors of the Stoneman Douglas Shooting" using the hashtag #NeverAgain. A main goal of the group was to influence that year's United States mid-term elections, and they embarked on a multi-city bus tour to encourage young people to register to vote.
Cameron Marley Kasky is an American activist and advocate against gun violence who co-founded the student-led gun violence prevention advocacy group Never Again MSD. He is notable for helping to organize the March for Our Lives nationwide student protest in March 2018. Kasky is a survivor of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Kasky was included in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People of 2018".
In 2018, protests against gun violence in the United States increased after a series of mass shootings, most notably at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 that year. An organized protest in the form of a national school walkout occurred on March 14. March for Our Lives was held on March 24. Another major demonstration occurred April 20, 2018.
Alexander Blake Wind is an American student activist against gun violence. A survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and a founding member of the Never Again MSD movement, he is a critic of politicians who are supported by the National Rifle Association of America. Wind was one of five Stoneman Douglas students featured on the cover of Time magazine in 2018.
David Miles Hogg is an American gun control activist. He rose to prominence during the 2018 United States gun violence protests as a student survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, helping lead several high-profile protests, marches, and boycotts, including the boycott of The Ingraham Angle. He has also been a target and scapegoat of several conspiracy theories.
Sarah Chadwick is an American activist against gun violence and one of the leaders of the Never Again MSD activist movement.
Jaclyn Corin is an American activist against gun violence. She survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018. She is one of the co-founders of March for Our Lives and the organizer of a student protest to Tallahassee, Florida. She has also been a vocal critic of politicians funded by the National Rifle Association.
Lauren Hogg is an American author and activist against gun violence. She survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018 and after became a co-founder of March for Our Lives and advocates against gun violence. She is the younger sister of gun control activist and former Marjory Stoneman Douglas student David Hogg. She graduated from MSD High School in 2021, three years after David.
Andrew Scott Pollack is an American author, school safety activist, and entrepreneur whose daughter Meadow was one of the 17 murdered victims in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.
The boycott of The Ingraham Angle was a boycott of companies that advertise their products during the Fox News television show The Ingraham Angle. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg initiated this boycott after the show's host, Laura Ingraham, ridiculed him amidst conspiracy theories related to the shooting at his school in 2018, in which 17 students died and where Hogg was a witness and survivor. Ingraham's particular criticism of Hogg was that some universities declined to offer him admission after his college application.
Ryan Deitsch is an American student activist against gun violence, and a survivor of the Parkland massacre. He is a founding member of the Never Again MSD movement.
Matthew Bryan Deitsch is an American writer, gun violence prevention advocate and political advisor. Before entering politics, he worked in broadcast media and was a freelance photographer, film director and music producer. After the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in which his siblings witnessed, Deitsch became chief strategist for the March For Our Lives protests and began advocating for gun violence prevention. He is the older brother of activist Ryan Deitsch.
Stand for the Second was a student-led demonstration in support of the United States Second Amendment held on May 2, 2018. The demonstration was in response to the March for Our Lives protest held on March 24, 2018.
Joseph Theodore Lewis is an American school safety advocate. Lewis started Newtown Helps Rwanda, a charity that raised money for survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide as well as former child soldiers in Uganda. He previously was a candidate in the 2020 elections for Connecticut state senator for the 28th district, dropping out before the August primaries to work on a national campaign. He is the older brother of first grade student Jesse Lewis, a victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Samantha Deitsch is an American author and gun control activist who survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.
Aalayah Eastmond is an American activist and advocate for gun violence prevention, social justice, and racial equality. After surviving the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Eastmond began her activism during the 2018 United States gun violence protests. She has testified multiple times to the U.S. Congress. Eastmond is an executive council member of Team Enough, a youth-led gun violence prevention organization which is part of the Brady Campaign. Eastmond co-founded Concerned Citizens of DC in the wake of the murder of George Floyd to organize protests supporting social justice issues in Washington, D.C. She supports Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality.
