March For Our Lives founder Cameron Kasky leaves group

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Cameron Kasky, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior and one of the founding members of the March For Our Lives movement, has quit the group.

Kasky was one of the most public faces of the group of survivors of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Parkland, Fla., high school, where 17 people were killed by former student Nikolas Cruz.

About a month after the massacre, Kasky and several classmates led the March For Our Lives gun control rally in Washington, D.C., which, along with hundreds of sibling events across the country, drew an estimated 1.2 million protesters.

“I’m proud of everything my friends have done, everything they’re doing, and my focus on opening these conversations to people who disagree with me makes me even more invested in just how important the work they’re doing is,” Kasky told the Miami Herald Thursday.

A week after the shooting, Kasky made waves at a CNN town hall when he confronted Sen. Marco Rubio on stage.

“Senator Rubio, it's hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nicholas Cruz, but the point is you're here and there some people who are not,” the high school student said before questioning Rubio about accepting political contributions from the NRA.

Now, Kasky said he regrets his approach.

“I look back on that and I say, you know what, there were people who had just been buried and when you're looking at somebody that you find might in some way have been complicit in this murderer obtaining the weapon it's hard not to say something like that,” he said on Fox News Radio on Wednesday. “But, I went into that wanting less conversation and more to embarrass Rubio and that was my biggest flaw.”

Recently, Kasky has partnered with Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans and professional video game player Shay Kivlen to plan a charity video game to raise money for the families of Eli Clayton and Taylor Robertson, who were killed in the Jacksonville Madden tournament shooting last month.




HMM I wonder why he suddenly had this change of heart?

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A co-founder of March for Our Lives has left the group and said he regrets trying to “embarrass” Senator Marco Rubio at a town hall after the Parkland shooting that killed 17.

“I left the organization and if I thought that my friends and the people I worked with couldn’t do it without me I would not have done that,” high school student and shooting survivor Cameron Kasky told Fox News Radio on Wednesday.

“I’m very regretful of a lot of the mistakes that I’ve made along the way,” Kasky remarked.

He expressed particular remorse about how he addressed a question to Rubio at a CNN town hall just a week after a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

“Sen. Rubio, it’s hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz, but the point is you’re here and there are some people who are not,” Kasky told the Florida Republican at the time, also accusing the senator of being beholden to the National Rifle Association.

“I went into that wanting less conversation and more to embarrass Rubio and that was my biggest flaw,” he said. “I even name dropped the murderer, which at the time I never really thought about, but looking back it ticks me off so much when people do that because then you’re getting that person’s name out there and making them a celebrity.”

Kasky added that he also learned more about other political perspectives since starting the March for Our Lives.

“This summer when March For Our Lives went on the summer tour that we embarked on I met that person in Texas whose got that semi-automatic weapon because that’s how they like to protect their family,” he remembered. “I met the 50 some odd percent of woman who are pro-life, even though I thought it was preposterous that a woman could be pro-life and not pro-choice at the time.”

“I learned that a lot of our issues politically come from a lack of understanding of other perspectives,” the young activist remarked. “I’m working on some efforts to encourage bipartisanship or at least discussion that is productive and help a lot of people avoid the mistakes that I made.”





WOW! So he finally woke up just a wee bit?! I'm slightly impressed.

This shows no matter how blind people can be, they can still find the truth. I imagine this will be a great setback for March For Our Lives and the anti-gun agenda.

Props to Cameron.

I know everyone is frustrated with politics these days but shouting down people is not going to help anything get done. People are just gonna retreat further into their ideology they feel is "under attack".

W.A.R. wrote:

Props to Cameron.

I know everyone is frustrated with politics these days but shouting down people is not going to help anything get done. People are just gonna retreat further into their ideology they feel is "under attack".

The goal with March For Our Lives was never to change minds, it was to energize a base of already anti-gun folks. It seems to have worked. Florida changed its "assault weapon" age requirement and Washington approved I-1639 which puts a bunch of new restrictions on guns. In this era of political polarization, I think the most successful approach is to radicalize one's preexisting base as opposed to trying to reach across the aisle.

carokann wrote:

W.A.R. wrote:

Props to Cameron.

I know everyone is frustrated with politics these days but shouting down people is not going to help anything get done. People are just gonna retreat further into their ideology they feel is "under attack".

The goal with March For Our Lives was never to change minds, it was to energize a base of already anti-gun folks. It seems to have worked. Florida changed its "assault weapon" age requirement and Washington approved I-1639 which puts a bunch of new restrictions on guns. In this era of political polarization, I think the most successful approach is to radicalize one's preexisting base as opposed to trying to reach across the aisle.

Don't see it as a good strategy. It'll lead to having people in charge that make Donald Trump look restrained.

carokann wrote:

In this era of political polarization, I think the most successful approach is to radicalize one's preexisting base as opposed to trying to reach across the aisle.

That's a great way to exacerbate already existing tensions and cause boatloads of domestic terrorism and political related violence.

W.A.R. wrote:

carokann wrote:

W.A.R. wrote:

Props to Cameron.

I know everyone is frustrated with politics these days but shouting down people is not going to help anything get done. People are just gonna retreat further into their ideology they feel is "under attack".

The goal with March For Our Lives was never to change minds, it was to energize a base of already anti-gun folks. It seems to have worked. Florida changed its "assault weapon" age requirement and Washington approved I-1639 which puts a bunch of new restrictions on guns. In this era of political polarization, I think the most successful approach is to radicalize one's preexisting base as opposed to trying to reach across the aisle.

Don't see it as a good strategy. It'll lead to having people in charge that make Donald Trump look restrained.

I'm not saying it's a good thing for the country, but they seem to be accomplishing their short-term goals. Bipartisanship has been dead since the Obama era. Long term... who knows.