David Hogg removed from hearing on assault weapons ban

March for Our Lives co-founder David Hogg interrupted a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday on an assault weapons ban, accusing pro-gun lawmakers of using racist talking points to oppose gun control legislation.

Hogg, who is also a Parkland school shooting survivor, interrupted comments from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) that Americans should be armed against an “invasion on our southern border.”

“The shooter at my high school: antisemitic, anti-Black and racist. The shooter in El Paso described it as an invasion,” Hogg shouted at Biggs, referring to a 2019 shooting at a Texas Walmart, as he was escorted from the committee room. 

“Those guns are coming from the United States of America. They aren’t coming from Mexico,” he added. “You are reiterating the points of a mass shooter, sir.”

The Judiciary panel was gathered to mark up the 2021 Assault Weapons Ban and the Equal Access for Victims of Gun Violence Act. 

The hearing comes in the wake of a series of mass shootings that have placed renewed pressure on lawmakers to move on gun control.

In the span of two months, gunmen armed with semi-automatic rifles killed 10 Black people in a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store; 19 children and two adults in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, and and seven people at a July 4 parade in Highland Park, Ill.

Hogg has been an active prominent voice in the push for lawmakers to act, sparring on Twitter with pro-gun Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) and backing a Senate gun reform package.

Hogg shared a video of his removal from the committee room in an Instagram post, writing “I just got kicked out of congress and I would do it again. … I’m tired of hearing these Republicans use the same talking points as mass shooters.”

After Hogg was removed, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said, “I just want to respect the gentleman who could not take it anymore and had to express himself. I acknowledge his pain.”

She pushed back against the GOP lawmakers, saying the ban would prohibit “warlike weapons,” not disarm Americans broadly, and that such weapons wouldn’t be taken from the U.S. military.

“None of the debate on the other side is enlightening. It’s rather insulting. It’s nothing to do with reality,” Jackson said. 

Hogg co-founded the youth-led movement March for Our Lives after 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High School, where Hogg was a student, in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.