Gun-control activist David Hogg is out at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after recently deciding to exit the reelection for the position of vice chair.
Hogg held the position for roughly five months before members of the DNC voted 294-99 last week to remove him and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta from the vice chair positions and redo the election. The vote was reportedly triggered after fellow DNC member Kalyn Free filed a challenge to the initial vice chair election, alleging that it was unfairly conducted and violated DNC identity-politics procedures.
Whether that’s true or not, Hogg was also at loggerheads with at least some DNC leadership. Hogg repeatedly came out in favor of primarying incumbents. Hogg’s announcement on X, as part of a lengthy thread, also noted that he was “seeing a serious lack of vision from Democratic leaders,” and that his PAC, Leaders We Deserve, was “primarying” Democrat incumbents.
Of course, Hogg’s gun-control zealotry, which was functionally the only thing he was known for prior to his rapid but brief ascension to vice chair at the DNC, is clearly at odds with gun owners who happen to be Democrats. (To straddle this rift, former Vice President Kamala Harris (D) and Minn. Gov. Tim Walz (D) both attempted to portray themselves as seasoned gun owners in the run up to last year’s presidential election.)
As Susanne Edward recently reported for America’s 1st Freedom, “David Hogg is not the cause of the Democratic Party’s internal debate over guns—he is a symbol of it. His high-profile role in the DNC has forced the issue into the open: Can the party continue to push aggressive gun-control rhetoric while a growing number of its supporters are gun owners themselves?”
Though Hogg apparently exited the race of his own volition, that this vote was brought to fruition shows there is an internal division.
“NRA will miss his presence at the DNC; mostly because he always was a good source for material exposing just how anti-gun Democrat leaders are these days. Perhaps future reports on his anti-gun efforts will also include the strife he is causing anti-gun Democrat incumbents. Maybe his anti-gun-at-any-cost perspective will lead to more rank-and-file Democrats who support the Second Amendment to pressure their leaders to abandon their current disarmament agenda,” wrote the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.
Though Hogg has left the DNC, it’s unlikely that this is the last time he will insert himself in the news.
