During a House Judiciary Committee debate Wednesday on proposed gun control legislation, school shooting survivor David Hogg accosted Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and was then ushered out of the room. Later that night on Fox News, Biggs suggested that Hogg’s actions were serious enough for a Jan. 6-type committee to investigate and for him to be charged accordingly.
The Judiciary Committee was considering a bill that would restore an assault weapons ban, which was previously on the books from 1994 until 2004, when Congress failed to renew it. Fox host Tucker Carlson claimed that this ban “did nothing to reduce violent crime” and that the government “has 10 years of data that prove it.” (The Fox host did not cite any of this data.)
Carlson then fretted that law-abiding gun owners are being unfairly targeted by the newly proposed ban, and claimed that Biggs, who “grateful[ly]” received the NRA’s endorsement in 2020, “made that point” on Wednesday.
Carlson showed a clip where Biggs says that assault weapons could be used at the southern border for protection against an “invasion,” at which point he was interrupted by Hogg. “You are reiterating the points of mass shooters in your manifesto. The shooter at my high school: antisemitic, anti-Black and racist. The shooter in El Paso described it as an invasion,” he shouted. Hogg later tweeted a video of the encounter, writing that “the shooters were inspired by racist, anti-Black, anti-immigrant manifestos that rhyme with GOP talking points.”
Parts of the online manifesto of the accused white supremacist mass shooter at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in May, for instance, resemble Carlson’s nightly commentary.
Deriding Hogg as a “publicity seeker” who “somehow got into Harvard on the basis of a tragedy he happened to be nearby,” Carlson said that his interruption of the committee hearing “sounds like insurrection.” Biggs latched onto this argument, the likes of which were deployed by many on the right after staffers for The Late Show for Stephen Colbert were arrested on Capitol grounds while filming for that show.
“He was saying that I am a terrorist manifesto-toting conspiracy nut, and the reality is all he wants is to get on TV and he wanted to advocate for a nutty position. And you’re right…he interrupted our proceeding, and Democrats have said if you interrupt a proceeding, that is the definition of insurrection, and so the police had to take him out,” Biggs said.
“He was invited there by the Democrats – that is what I’m informed – and so he is trying to grift on this whole thing, it looks like,” he continued. “And he should probably be brought up on charges. Where is that Jan. 6 committee when you need them?”