Not everyone is on the pro-gun control train after the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14 that left 17 people dead. The nation was shocked. The students of the school mobilized for a renewed anti-gun push, except Kyle Kashuv. He’s conservative. He’s pro-Second Amendment. He’s for meeting with anyone who will work hard to enhance school safety and maybe background checks, especially concerning mental health. He’s not drinking the anti-gun Kool-aid that’s made his peers the faces of the new gun control movement. He’s not going to hang up on calls from the Trump White House and then brag about it, which David Hogg did as if to say he scored points with his side. It’s quite simple. You can be for gun rights and also be against mass murder, school shooting, and crime.
Yet, Kashuv found himself at the center of an interrogation by police as if he had committed a crime. His mistake: going to the gun range with his father, shooting AR-15 rifles, and tweeting about it. This was his first time shooting a gun. He went on your run-of-the-mill Twitter thread stressing the importance of facts in the gun debate that’s conspicuously absent on the Left, and why the Second Amendment is important. No laws were broken. Nothing he did was wrong. Still, Kashuv was summoned and questioned by the school resource officer and a Broward County Deputy over these tweets in what he described as a rude and condescending interrogation. The Daily Wire has more:
Near the end of third period, my teacher got a call from the office saying I need to go down and see a Mr. Greenleaf. I didn’t know Mr. Greenleaf, but it turned out that he was an armed school resource officer. I went down and found him, and he escorted me to his office. Then a second security officer walked in and sat behind me. Both began questioning me intensely. First, they began berating my tweet, although neither of them had read it; then they began aggressively asking questions about who I went to the range with, whose gun we used, about my father, etc. They were incredibly condescending and rude.
Then a third officer from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office walked in, and began asking me the same questions again. At that point, I asked whether I could record the interview. They said no. I asked if I had done anything wrong. Again, they answered no. I asked why I was there. One said, “Don’t get snappy with me, do you not remember what happened here a few months ago?”
They continued to question me aggressively, though they could cite nothing I had done wrong. They kept calling me “the pro-Second Amendment kid.” I was shocked and honestly, scared. It definitely felt like they were attempting to intimidate me.
I was treated like a criminal for no reason other than having gone to the gun range and posted on social media about it.
It was great learning about our inalienable right of #2A and how to properly use a gun. This was my first time ever touching a gun and it made me appreciate the #Constitution even more. My instructor was very informative; I learnt a lot. #2A is important and we need 2 preserve 2A pic.twitter.com/4rcOZbpl88
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) April 21, 2018
Okay, so let’s go over the silver linings here. At least the Broward County Sheriffs deputy was not napping in the patrol car. Police bullied Kashuv. He did nothing wrong. They were just irritated that he exercised his civil rights. Also, the sheriff's deputy telling Kashuv, “Don’t get snappy with me, do you not remember what happened here a few months ago?” is rich. Yeah, these kids remember. The nation remembers. Nikolas Cruz, the shooter, went on a rampage and you people didn’t engage him. Where was then-Officer Scot Peterson, the resource officer assigned to the school, at the time of this incident? He was outside the building not engaging Cruz. It took 11 minutes for police to even enter the building. Kashuv wasn’t armed. He tweeted about going to the gun range, something that’s done millions of times a day by law-abiding gun owners. If police don’t know this, then what else are they missing? I have all the respect for law enforcement. It’s a tough job. I’ve never had bad run-ins with the police, but this was bush league. It was singling out the pro-Second Amendment kid and berating him for exercising his God-given American civil rights. Ironically, the dress down provides the reason why we have a Second Amendment. Not the interrogation per se, but the notion that an innocent, law-abiding citizen can and will be bullied if we allow citizenry to de deprived of firearms for self-defense from government and others wishing to do harm. The Second Amendment has many functions; protecting us from a possible abusive and usurpatory government is one of the prime reasons for its existence.