Parkland Anti-Gun Activist Announce Congressional Run

When you hear about one of the Parkland kids deciding to run for office, your first thought might well be that David Hogg is going for it. After all, he was (briefly) vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Someone who will run for that would also potentially seek a congressional seat.

But that’s not who is running.

Oh no, it’s Cameron Kasky, who has more or less dropped off the activism radar over the last few years.

Cameron Kasky, a Jewish survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting and co-founder of the March for Our Lives gun control advocacy group, announced Tuesday that he is running for Congress in New York’s heavily Jewish 12th District.

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In a statement on his campaign website, Kasky linked his activism against American-made firearms to his opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel, writing: “As a school shooting survivor, I began my life calling for an end to the mass murder of innocent children and adults using weapons manufactured by the United States. Witnessing the ongoing genocide in Gaza has served as a haunting, serious reminder that it is my life’s purpose to advocate against violence everywhere.”

Kasky has also called for Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and measures to regulate artificial intelligence.

He’s running for Jerry Nadler’s seat as the elder man is retiring from office.

Honestly, before the last two paragraphs I quoted, I’d have classified Kasky as one of the more sane of the Parkland bunch, but it’s pretty damn clear he’s just as nuts as Hogg, if not worse.

While he doesn’t expressly mention gun control, it’s a fair bet that it’ll be a key issue for him should he win office. I’m still unsure as to when he ended up in New York so he could run for Nadler’s seat, but here he is. 

I’m just not sure taking the anti-Israeli stance on the whole Gaza thing is a winning strategy in the 12th District, though it’s also New York, so it could go either way.

Should he win, Kasky will be the first March For Our Lives co-founder to win public office, so far as I’m aware. While Maxwell Frost was involved with the group before he joined Congress, he wasn’t in Parkland when the shooting happened. His claim to mass shooting survivor came from a different incident.

It’ll be interesting to see if Kasky can actually convince people to vote for him at just 25 years of age, but since New York elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, anything is possible.

If there’s an upside here, it’s in the fact that Nadler has been anti-gun, too, which means Kasky winning would be a continuation of the status quo, and it’s unlikely the 12th District is going to elect a pro-gun member of Congress anyway, so there will be almost no change at all beyond the fact that Kasky will likely trot out his “survivor” status to try and shame people into not criticizing what are bound to be stupid takes.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens between now and the midterms.

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