David Hogg disrupts House hearing on banning assault weapons

Gun control activist David Hogg disrupted a congressional hearing on Wednesday on the topic of gun control. 

Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, accused House lawmakers of doing little to stop gun violence. 

“You are perpetuating violence … stop these things now,” Hogg said while being removed from the hearing room by security. 

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The outburst came as the House Judiciary Committee was debating legislation that would ban assault weapons, a term used to describe semi-automatic rifles. 

During Wednesday’s hearing tempers ran high. Apart from Hogg’s disruption, lawmakers accused each other of political maneuvering and being insensitive to gun violence. 

“We all respect the Second Amendment, but it’s not without limits,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I. “Imagine how much we could get accomplished if we clung to the desire to protect our children and communities as tightly as some of my colleagues cling to their rifles.”

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The hearings came less than a month has passed since Biden signed the nation’s first new gun control law in nearly 30 years. That bill, which passed with GOP support, expands background checks and incentivizes states to adopt “red flag” laws, which are used to confiscate guns from those deemed dangerous. 

Republican supporters of that bill said that Congress learns from its success and look for other avenues of bipartisan cooperation, rather than pushing pet issues that have no hope of becoming law. 

Hogg’s outburst came while the Senate Judiciary Committee was hearing testimony across the Capitol from the mayor of Highland Park, Illinois. The community was wracked by a mass shooting over the July 4th weekend that left seven dead and at least 48 wounded. 

“Less than a minute is all it took for a person with an assault weapon to shoot 83 rounds into a crowd, forever changing so many lives,” Mayor Nancy Rotering told the panel. “Is this freedom?”