Twitter Bans Gun Rights Activist for 12 Hours, But Welcomes Death Threats Against Her
A few short weeks ago, gun rights activist and Grassroots Director of Liberty Hangout, Kaitlin Bennett, became a public figure after she sported an AR-10 rifle on her back for her graduation photos at Kent State University. After weeks of being in the spotlight, Bennett woke up this morning to a very troubling notification.
Yesterday, Bennett posted a photo to Twitter of herself with two pistols behind her back with a caption that read “If I had a pistol for every gender there is.”
Upon opening up her Twitter application this morning, Bennett was met with the following message.
Bennett is sent death threats on a daily basis and Twitter has not deemed it to be a violation of their terms and services. When Hollywood actor Jim Carrey drew a photo of Bennett in front of the devil to blame the recent school shooting in Texas on her, Twitter did not consider it targeted harassment or “an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.” When a leftist compared Bennett to a school shooter for being white and she received countless death threats as a result, Twitter did not ban the user for harassment, and let the tweet garner more than half a million likes. When a black student from Kent State made racist attacks on Bennett calling her “hillbilly Carrie Bradshaw”, Twitter let the tweet get more than 130k likes. And when gun control activist David Hogg organized boycotts and die-ins at establishments such as Publix, with the express goal of intimidating them into halting political donations to the NRA, Twitter did not ban him for violating their terms of services.
Targeted harassment against Bennett such as this is allowed to receive more than 130k likes as well.
But when Kaitlin Bennett uses the platform to defend the 2nd amendment and the right to self-defense, Twitter finds this behavior appalling. Twitter believes it is harassment and intimidation to think every American has the right to defend themselves from aggressors, but using their platform to actually harass and intimidate supporters of the 2nd amendment is okay.
Bennett’s countless death threats caused her local sheriff’s office to rush her conceal carry application and get Bennett her license in just twenty minutes, a process that can normally take up to 45 days in the state of Ohio. While the threats are of concern to law enforcement, Twitter has no problem with them.
It is egregious for Twitter to arbitrarily enforce their rules and set different standards for users based upon their political beliefs. It is abundantly clear that they do not want conservatives to feel welcome on their platform, and will twist words to get them banned for innocuous posts, while welcoming death threats and harassment against them.
Support Kaitlin and her #CampusCarryNow initiative by ordering a t-shirt here.
