Swatting is the act of placing a fake emergency call to first responders, often leading to an armed response as police think they’ll be encountering a violent situation. It can be used as a prank or as a form of harassment and has led to fatal consequences. The Notre Dame Law Review has called swatting “a domestic terrorism threat.”
Since the tragic mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas, Hogg has been an outspoken advocate for g*n safety, although his methods have been seen as somewhat controversial. Hogg recently held a “d*e in” at Coral Springs Publix last week, sparking some outrage at his methods to bring attention to g*n control. “That was like a huge kick to the stomach because you [Publix] say that you support us and then you go out and give [money to] a guy that’s literally an NRA sellout,” Hogg said. “I decided to do the ‘d*e-in’ at Publix because I was tired of the complacency again and again.”
This event comes just as March for Our Lives organizers are embarking on the next phase of their anti–g*n violence movement: a 60-day bus tour across the U.S. this summer to register young people to vote and to continue highlighting the NRA’s influence over politics. “This tour is about exposing people who take money from the NRA and registering people to vote — those are the two main things we’re trying to push with this,” Jaclyn Corin, a student who survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school s******g in February, told BuzzFeed News on Sunday.
They’re calling it “March for Our Lives: Road to Change.” It begins with a peace march on June 15 in Chicago and will take students to more than 50 stops in more than 20 states, including Iowa, California, South Carolina, Connecticut and Texas. “We’re going to places where the NRA has bought and paid for politicians who refuse to take simple steps to save our lives — and we’ll be visiting a number of communities that have been affected by g*n violence to meet fellow survivors and use our voices to amplify theirs,” the March for Our Lives website says of the bus tour, which is slated to start on June 15 in Chicago.