Cameron Marley Kasky (born November 11, 2000) is an American activist and advocate against gun violence who co-founded the student-led gun violence prevention advocacy group Never Again MSD. He is notable for helping to organize the March for Our Lives nationwide student protest in March 2018. Kasky is a survivor of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Kasky was included in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People of 2018".
Early life and education
Kasky was a student, a "theatre kid", and former member of the drama club at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and was a junior at the time of the school shooting in February 2018. He has a younger brother with autism who is also a survivor of the MSD shooting. After graduating from high school, he attended Columbia University for several trimesters, but dropped out.
Advocacy
Kasky had just left drama class when the shooting began at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018. After he met his younger brother at a different classroom and exiting the school, the fire alarm sounded. With other students, they were instructed to go back inside. They waited an hour in a classroom until they were rescued.
After the shooting, Kasky brought several school friends to his house and with them founded Never Again MSD (#NeverAgain), a student-led gun control advocacy group. Kasky came up with the name "Never Again" while the group stayed up through the night to make plans, and he posted "Stay alert. #NeverAgain" to Facebook. The group works to create a national movement against gun violence, including an effort to publicize legislators receiving money from the NRA and persuading people not to vote for them. It promoted and led a massive rally called March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, on March 24, 2018.
According to a report in The New Yorker, it was Kasky's idea to found the activist group along with fellow students David Hogg, X González, Sarah Chadwick and others – a group described by reporter Michael Schulman as having "moral clarity and vision" in the gun control debate. Kasky wrote an op-ed on the CNN website describing the events of the massacre and his reaction to it. In an interview, Kasky told the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper that "my generation won't stand for this." Although known as a "theatre kid" with a reputation for being the class clown, Kasky's experience after the shooting was primarily one of anger:
At a televised "Stand Up" town hall session sponsored by CNN with Senator Marco Rubio, Kasky asked the senator whether he would continue receiving money from the National Rifle Association (NRA): "Can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?" Rubio responded by saying, "I will always accept the help of anyone who agrees with my agenda." Kasky repeatedly questioned Rubio about whether he would continue receiving NRA money. The senator did not offer a definitive response but appeared to soften his positions regarding some gun restrictions.
Kasky temporarily stopped utilizing Facebook as a result of death threats. When later Kasky was accused of being a crisis actor, he replied to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "if you had seen me in our school's production of 'Fiddler on the Roof,' you would know that nobody would pay me to act for anything."
Kasky announced the March for Our Lives rally on February 18, 2018. Later that week, Kasky appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show with X González and Jaclyn Corin to discuss their advocacy and march. Kasky said, "The thing that inspired us to create the march was people saying, 'This is not the time to talk about gun control, this is the time to mourn.' We understand that, so here's the time to talk about gun control. March 24th."
In March 2018, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine along with fellow activists Jaclyn Corin, X Gonzalez, David Hogg, and Alex Wind.
Kasky called President Donald Trump a "professional liar" on CNN after Trump delivered a pro-gun speech at the annual NRA convention in Dallas in May 2018, in contrast to Trump's prior call for gun control reform in the wake of the Parkland shooting. Kasky criticized the president to point out Trump said what he needed to say to appease the NRA.
In May 2018, Kasky's father registered a super PAC, Families vs Assault Rifles PAC (FAMSVARPAC), with intentions of going "up against NRA candidates in every meaningful race in the country".