Parkland activist says achieving gun reform harder under Biden because everyone wanted to ‘stick it to old orange man’

A former Parkland high school student, Cameron Kasky, has complained that the media was not pushing for gun reform under the Joe Biden administration as hard as it did when Donald Trump was in the White House.

Mr Kasky – who was a student during the horrific Marjory Stoneman Douglass high school shooting in 2018, which left 17 dead – is an outspoken advocate for gun reform.

The former student appeared on The Young Turks on Monday to explain that gun reform advocates are receiving less help under the Biden administration, and claimed the lack of interest was due to a Democrat serving as president.

"Right now, this very moment is a very complicated time for gun violence prevention activists because with Biden in the White House, the media does not want to aid us in demanding stronger gun reforms because whatever Joe Biden does is suddenly the right thing to do," Mr Kasky said.

He said that since Mr Biden took office, liberals and some media outlets have stopped supporting the calls for robust gun control, chalking the advocates up as drum-beating leftists.

"When Donald Trump was the president, calling for an assault weapons ban and saying that the measures that he was putting in place were not nearly enough was a very popular opinion. Now if you're calling for an assault weapons ban, suddenly you're just an angry leftist who will never be happy with anything," he said.

He said any critical comment or call for Mr Biden to do more is met with harsh resistance from liberals.

"So that's kinda the case across the board with activists in this time of the Biden era. Anything that their administration is willing to do is the popular thing and if you ask for even a little bit more... well, now we're the bad guys because we're 'complaining too much,' we 'aren't happy enough with all the great things President Biden is giving us.' It's tough," Mr Kasky said.

He said that advocates had a "much easier time calling for changes when Trump was the president because everyone wanted to help stick it to Old Orange Man."

Mr Kasky predicted that the Biden presidency would be "four years of half measures and softballs from a policy perspective."

He said he did not see Mr Biden as trying to unite the left and the center as much as trying to unite the right and the "center-left," which he said is "increasingly more like the center-right."

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