The father of a student who survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018 responded angrily to Mike Huckabee's comparison between skateboards and guns.
Huckabee, ostensibly deriding comments former congressman Beto O'Rourke made about gun control during last week's Democratic debate, tweeted on Saturday that "Dozens are killed every year on skateboards. Thousands injured. Hey Beto! Heck yes, we're going to take your SKATEBOARD!"
The phrasing appeared to mock O'Rourke's comments during the debate where he said, "hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15." The 2020 presidential candidate supports a mandatory buyback plan for some weapons.
In response to Huckabee, Barry Schapiro, who the Washington Post last year identified as the father of a Stoneman Douglas high school student, tweeted that Huckabee was an "a**hole."
"My daughter didn't hide in a f**ing closet for 3 hours because someone was hunting and murdering her classmates with a skateboard," Schapiro wrote. "Since this is taking off, know this is my message: Our nation's greatest asset, our children, are the innocent victims of gun manufacturers' greed enabled by their corrupt lobby and our elected whores. Don't let that be our legacy to them. Too many have died. Vote #GunSense."
The exchange between Schapiro and Huckabee links to a broader gun discussion that drew renewed attention after the Parkland, Florida, shooting in 2018, which left 17 people dead, and has held a prominent place in national discourse since. Student activists, like David Hogg and Emma González, launched a fervent campaign to push for greater gun control after surviving the massacre. Youth activists led the March for Our Lives, a mass demonstration held the past two years in Washington, D.C., to advocate for gun violence prevention.
The wave of activism following Parkland catalyzed a range of state gun control measures, with Florida, New Jersey and Vermont passing restrictions before the end of 2018.
Prominent companies have also begun taking action, a move gun control activists have long agitated for.
Dick's Sporting Goods announced less than a month after the Parkland shooting that it would stop selling assault-style weapons and raised the age needed to purchase other firearms to 21. In March, the company said that it would stop selling guns at 125 of its 700 stores across the country. Although sales initially slumped, the company's sales jumped 3.2 percent in the second quarter of 2019, a strong showing that appeared to indicate that outrage had subsided.
Walmart, the nation's largest private employer, also said earlier this month that it would stop selling certain types of firearm ammunition and asked customers not to open carry in the store. Following the announcement from Walmart, Kroger, CVS and Walgreens asked customers not to open carry firearms, but did not ban the practice. The New York Times published an article depicting these requests as an attempt to straddle a line that would simultaneously appease gun control activists and gun rights activists.
