Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg says he's been target of 7 assassination attempts
FOX NEWS - David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Fla., massacre who has become a highly visible gun control activist, claims he has been the target of an assassination attempt seven times the past year.
Hogg, 19, told The Washington Post in an article published on Tuesday that the attempts to end his life came from people who are "misguided and misinformed of what we’re actually here to talk about."
He said that if someone were to kill him because of his efforts to curb gun violence, it would most likely be "the stupidest thing they could do to try to end the movement. Because that would make it even more successful in the end. Because it would invigorate us and create f---ing change."
Hogg survived the mass shooting that unfolded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018, leaving 17 people dead. In the aftermath, he founded "Never Again MSD," a student-led gun control advocacy group, along with other prominent student leaders.
The 19-year-old, who plans to attend Harvard this fall, recognized that Parkland students quickly started a larger conversation about school shootings and said it's "because we’re not vulnerable."
"What are you going to come after? We lost our friends in school that day. We lost our teachers in school that day. We don’t have jobs. You can’t come after our jobs that don’t exist. And we aren’t afraid to call out the bulls--- and the real thing that’s causing this," he told the Post.
Hogg said that in the last year alone, multiple people have threatened his life. He acknowledged it's "horrible that I have to live through this, and it is traumatizing."
"But you eventually become desensitized to it. Like, oh, your house got SWAT-ted. You got a call from the police saying someone said that everyone in your family had been killed and that you are being held hostage for $100,000. Right? That becomes part of daily life," he said. "It’s just something that you have to get through. But I mean, what am I going to do? Stop?"
The former Stoneman Douglas student said he has no plans to end his mission.
"I want to go to school and, for lack of a better word, weaponize my knowledge and learn as much as possible to end violence."