Kaitlin Bennett: AKA The Kent State Gun Girl

[Cartmann99]

Kaitlin Bennett first became widely known because of this picture:

Washington Post article from May with more background on Kaitlin:

Quote

If Kaitlin Bennett had been allowed to carry a gun at Kent State University while a student, she wouldn’t have carried an AR-10 rifle. She would have carried her handgun instead.

But the 22-year-old said she chose to pose with the rifle for her graduation photos Sunday because it made for a stronger symbol: That, as a non-student, she could at last arm herself on the northeast Ohio campus. To Bennett, the photo was the culmination of her years as a conservative student activist, during which she advocated for students to be able to carry concealed weapons on the same campus where, almost 50 years ago, the Ohio National Guard opened fire into a crowd of unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four and wounding nine.

“I believe that if the government has it, we should have it. Machine guns — any weaponry,” Bennett told The Washington Post on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after her graduation photo accumulated 3,200 retweets (a stat that has since climbed to 4,500 retweets and more than 18,000 likes).

“To make sure the government can’t go against the citizens,” she said. “We should be able to protect ourselves against a tyrannical government.”

The provocative images earned Bennett an appearance on “Fox and Friends” Thursday morning and, according to Bennett, marriage requests from multiple young men. Bennett apologized to her would-be suitors, explaining that she has a boyfriend and posted an image of a similarly armed man standing next to her.

She wasn’t so polite to Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg. Bennett mocked the gun-control activist on Twitter for having “tiny arms with Hitler-like bands” because Hogg had retweeted a fellow activist’s accusations of “white privilege” without adding Bennett’s username. She called the tweet “racist” and used her appearance on Fox News to explain why she is so offended.

“I was not expecting the blatant racism that’s been thrown at me,” Bennett told Fox’s Steve Doocy. “They’re saying that I have white privilege for going out on campus with my AR-10.”

“I think that’s very insulting to minorities,” Bennett said. “I don’t think that anything bad would happen to them.”

Bennett smiled as she continued to defend herself against claims that her photo shoot is an example of white privilege. “I actually had a black police officer with me the whole time.” she said. “He was just … he loved it.”

The college graduate shared the pictures at a time when conservatives in Congress have pushed legislation to allow those with concealed-carry permits in one state to carry their concealed weapons in all 50 states. The president and other Republicans have also talked about arming teachers following the Parkland school massacre.

Bennett, who was raised by a Republican family in Zanesville, Ohio, knew her photo would provoke backlash. She’d found herself at the center of controversy on campus plenty of times before. Just three weeks ago, she co-organized an open-carry demonstration that invited nearby residents to bring their firearms to the university. (Kent State University bans students, staff and faculty from carrying “deadly weapons,” according to its website. State law allows graduates and visitors to openly carry weapons on campus, but only outdoors, according to university spokesman Eric Mansfield.)

But Bennett never imagined the photo would spread so rapidly across the country. In the photo, Bennett is wearing a white dress and wedge heels. Her brother’s AR-10 rifle, equipped with a scope, is slung over her shoulder. In her hand is her black graduation cap, marked with the rifle cutout and the words “COME AND TAKE IT.” The historic slogan dates back to the Revolutionary War and the Texas Revolution against Mexico, she said, when Texan rebels fashioned a flag with the phrase over the image of a cannon as a sign of their defiance.

She was with her family and her boyfriend Sunday, the day after she graduated, when the photo was taken, she said. A campus officer was with the group as well, as Bennett had notified the university of her intent to take photographs with the rifle.

The caption on the photo read, “Now that I graduated from @KentState, I can finally arm myself on campus. I should have been able to do so as a student- especially since 4 unarmed students were shot and killed by the government on this campus. #CampusCarryNow.”

The photo was met with criticism. One Twitter user commented, “If person of color was walking around campus with a gun the whole damn police station would come and shoot them in a second #WhitePrivilege.” Another wrote, “You have no reason to have that anywhere near an institution like @KentState and I firmly believe that by having photos like this taken where you’re slapping their rules in the face you’re the worst kind of gun advocate.”

Aliah Kimbro, a 19-year-old Kent State sophomore, told Refinery 29 that it was hard for her as a black woman to support Bennett, knowing her own gun rights “aren’t safe anywhere.”

“To see that tweet, ‘Come and take it,’ as if lives weren’t taken on that campus due to gun violence, just shocked me,” Kimbro told Refinery 29. “Kent became an open-carry campus in the last year and there were many protests from that, the incident of May 4 not forgotten.”

Since posting the photo, Bennett said she has also received death threats.

“I’m not nervous, because everyone knows that I’m armed,” she said. “I don’t know why they would threaten an armed person.”

As president of the university’s chapter of the libertarian media outlet Liberty Hangout, she’s used to being attacked, said Bennett, who was also formerly president of the Kent State chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative organization. She said conservative students on campus have in the past been assaulted and said that in April someone swung at one of Liberty Hangout’s cameramen, breaking his equipment.

Kent State University was recently ranked the safest college campus with more than 10,000 students in Ohio and the 25th safest in the country by the National Council for Home Safety and Security. Mansfield said in a statement that the university has a full-time, certified police force of more than 30 sworn officers who protect the campus. The officers are visible, well-trained and on duty 24/7 to protect students, staff and faculty.

Bennett called the university out on Twitter for touting their safety ranking, and wrote that her cameraman had been assaulted “for supporting the 2nd amendment.”

“The presence of a firearm would have deterred this assault,” she wrote.

Bennett isn’t the first student this graduation season whose graduation photo with a gun has gone viral. In April, Brenna Spencer of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, posted a picture where she wore a “Trump for Women” T-shirt with a handgun in the waistband of her jeans while standing outside a Tennessee museum. She told ABC News that she wanted the photo to “show who I am as a person,” and was “was really, really surprising to see the amount of hate that I got.”

Bennett, who graduated Saturday with a bachelor’s in biology, plans to pursue a job in the field. But she also intends to stay in Kent, Ohio, and continue her activism on campus and her involvement with Liberty Hangout.

She said many people have attacked her for suggesting students should carry rifles on campus. But that’s not what she intended to do, she said. While she plans to buy an AR-style rifle for herself in the near future, she would use it primarily to practice target shooting in her family’s expansive back yard, because the rifles are “super fun, and easier to shoot.”

“On campus I would never carry an AR-10 for self-defense,” she said. “There’s so many people who aren’t getting it — it’s just a photo shoot.”

This is the second tweet I've seen where she goes to New York and complains about their gun laws:

Kaitlin's thoughts about the government shutdown:

Spoiler

 

Here she is interviewing people for InfoWars:

Spoiler

 

She's not wearing a gun in her latest photo shoot, so there's that:

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

What a tool. I'm guessing she's auditioning for Faux or Breitbart.

[Howl]

Watch out, Tomi!  There's always somebody younger, cuter and crazier than you! 

[AmericanRose]

I can't believe people give her $589 a month.

[Cartmann99]

 

6 hours ago, AmericanRose said:

I can't believe people give her $589 a month.

I noticed that she doesn't currently have any advertisers wanting to pay at least $350 a month for her to promote their products, and only one regular patron at the $100 level. She either needs a lot more patrons, or she needs to pick up some advertisers. Even if her plans don't include living primarily off of her donations, showing that she's a hot commodity could help her get a job at somewhere like Faux News or one of those Traditional Guns Freedom Jesus Family Liberty organizations that needs a spokesperson.

https://www.patreon.com/KaitlinBennett

I guess she's given up on pursuing a career in biology until she finds out if this track is more profitable.

[Howl]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

You know what would have been a REAL Christmas present to everyone? If she hit herself in the head repeatedly with the butt of that gun. Then maybe she wouldn't have time to tweet out nonsense.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

 

Is this Kaitlin's audition tape to be a guard in the Trump reeducation camps? 

[47of74]

You know what would have been a REAL Christmas present to everyone? If she hit herself in the head repeatedly with the butt of that gun. Then maybe she wouldn't have time to tweet out nonsense.

Or she’ll go full on Carrie Prejean and self detract (I was gonna say self destruct but my iPhone autocorrected that).

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/11/04/miss.california.usa.settlement/index.html

[mamallama]

"Now that I graduated from @KentState, I can finally arm myself on campus. I should have been able to do so as a student- especially since 4 unarmed students were shot and killed by the government on this campus. #CampusCarryNow"

So she's avocating students arm themselves to fire back at law enforcement?

 

[Audrey2]

A friend and I just watched an old documentary on Kent State. It was heartbreaking and terrifying. I learned more about the student behavior in the days leading up to the massacre, with them burning the ROTC building and trashing uptown businesses. Governor  James Rhodes poured napalm on the fire and tossed torches when he called out the Ohio National Guard. He was very much a hard line law and order Governor, who had aspirations towards a national office. I also learned that at least one student was bayonetted the day before shots were fired. I don't get her attempt at humor in this.

Edited December 27, 2018 by Audrey2

[fraurosena]

I don’t think she was trying to be funny. She is deadly serious, and using the deaths of those students as propaganda. She’s counting on short memories and ignorance and hoping people will construe her words as that there was a school shooting.

She’s a horrible, twisted excuse for a human being who worships at the altar of guns and killing people. If she loves guns so much, she should join the military. Go and be in some real live action. See of she still likes her guns so much after.

[onekidanddone]

It is all a game to her so I say hand her some crime scene photos and see how flippant she is afterwards.

Edited December 27, 2018 by onekidanddone

[47of74]

It is all a game to her so I say hand her some crime scene photos and see how flippant she is afterwards.

 

Well as psychotic as she is she would probably get off on those photos.

[Flossie]

5 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

It is all a game to her so I say hand her some crime scene photos and see how flippant she is afterwards.

She'd need to know if they were republicans first. 

[Audrey2]

One of the students who died was involved in ROTC and wasn't there as a protester but more of an observer, and another young woman who died was hit when she was on her way to class.

To Chickiepoo, she'd say it was liberals protesting, and war good, liberals bad, so of course it's all the fault of the dead and injured (including one paralyzed) students.

This is personal to me, as I grew up about an hour from Kent State, and several of my classmates went there. My parents wouldn't let me consider it.

[Howl]

On 12/27/2018 at 1:29 AM, fraurosena said:

If she loves guns so much, she should join the military. Go and be in some real live action. See of she still likes her guns so much after.

Exactly this.  However, she's just trying to create a social media brand and make $$ off of it. 

[Cartmann99]

Her Patreon page is going the wrong direction. She was getting $589 a month from her fans, but her current haul is down to $524 a month.

https://www.patreon.com/KaitlinBennett

 

[Cartmann99]

Kaitlin has some thoughts about the shutdown:

Her Patreon page is up to $561 a month, but she still doesn't have any advertisers signed up wanting her to promote their products.

https://www.patreon.com/KaitlinBennett

[smittykins]

You first, sweetie.

[Gobsmacked]

I'm not sure what a Patreon page really is but she appears to make money off it without working? 

[onekidanddone]

23 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Kaitlin has some thoughts about the shutdown:

Her Patreon page is up to $561 a month, but she still doesn't have any advertisers signed up wanting her to promote their products.

https://www.patreon.com/KaitlinBennett

$561 bucks isn't going to keep her in ammo

[47of74]

Kaitlin has some thoughts about the shutdown:

 

If a relative of mine said something like that I wouldn’t be the only member of my family cutting all ties with her and telling her to fornicate off. I have government employees in my family and work for a company that is getting fornicated over by the shutdown.

[Elegant Mess]

I'd love to see how her "get a real job" spiel goes over with people in the armed forces right now!

[CTRLZero]

Quote

I really don't care that government employees aren't getting their paychecks, and neither should you. Taxation is theft. Get a real job!

Says the young woman who graduated from Kent State University.  Is Patreon like Go Fund Me?  So, another grifter?