NRA-ILA | Hogg’s Latest “Small Wrongness Concealed Within Larger Wrongness”

Is there anyone or anything that professional ranter, former progressive pillow company executive, and anti-gun activist David Hogg hasn’t blamed for gun crime? The NRA, predictably, has been pretty much at the top of his list (for instance, here, here, and here), but to date, the admittedly far-from-complete list also includes:

and – of course – “It’s the guns.”

This isn’t Hogg’s first time making strange musings on women and guns. In 2020, he wrote, “This is a tweet for [sic] the founders of the gun violence prevention movement started centuries ago by almost entirely black, brown and indigenous lgbtq women and non binary people that never got on the news or in most history books. We may not know all your names but thank you.”

Erin Palette, the national coordinator for the Pink Pistols, the largest “pro-queer gun group” in America, described the post as “completely careless in its inaccuracy, and therefore callous to the injustice done to those people whom he is claiming to champion.” Referring to the “centuries” of gun control that Hogg claimed existed, Palette writes, “I have no idea how he arrived at this number, and I doubt anyone else does, either. If there is a history book that tells the story of how non-white queer women and transwomen started a gun control movement in 1820, then I would very much like to read it.” Palette’s withering conclusion: “Hogg isn’t just wrong, he’s fractally wrong: not merely wrong, but wrong on every scale, with pockets of small wrongness concealed within larger wrongness; wrong from any analytical viewpoint, with each piece self-similarly wrong.”

There’s one potential explanation for Hogg’s new guilt-tripping of suburban white women (besides simply running out of people and groups he hasn’t already bashed).

The Gallup report states that “[g]un ownership among women has swelled from the low teens to more than 20% over the past 15 years, while it has remained in the low to mid-40s among men during the same period.” According to statistics from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), “in 2003, only 13 percent of women identified as gun owners. Fast forward to 2020 and that number totals nearly 25 percent” – and it continues to rise. A retailer survey by the NSSF shows that “[o]ver 33 percent of first-time gun buyers in 2021 were women.” A Washington Post article confirms that more women than ever own guns. Women “accounted for half of all gun purchases between 2019 and 2021 – and … new gun owners were more likely to be female. That is unprecedented, experts say.” This shift “could have a ‘huge impact’ on what the gun rights platform will look like,” and how gun control is viewed by female gun owners.

Hogg’s “white women” post, with its whiff of outdated misogyny, reminiscent of a line in George Orwell’s novel, 1984 (“It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.”). The social mediaverse wasted little time in taking Hogg to task. “Imagine hitting ‘send’ on this sexist & racist comment & thinking it’s a win.” “Those ‘white women in the suburbs’ realize that they are PROTECTED by the guns in their community …People like you who seek to disarm the public are putting GOOD CITIZENS at risk.”

Out of many, many great responses, one was especially useful, providing Hogg with a suggested and accurate addition to his baddies list. “First he blamed the guns. Then the NRA. Now it’s white women. Blame anyone but the shooters.”