Former Kent State University student known as ‘Gun Girl’ Is theDefinition of White Privilege

Kaitlyn Bennett, 24, has caused quite the controversy after taking her graduation pictures at Kent State University with an AR-10 automatic gun while protesting the school’s policy of eliminating open carry weapons on campus in 2018.

Bennett became the latest right-wing personality after her photos became viral. Later on she started to make statements and even wrote a few articles on Infowars that started her political views that were often in support of President Trump. Trump’s controversial decisions became the center of her work where she defended her views everywhere that would give her a platform.

She gained a lot of media attention because many believed she was the exact definition of “white privilege” based on her being able to carry a semi-automatic weapon on a college campus without being held accountable for openly carrying the weapon on campus. Ever since then, she has seemed to use all the attention she was receiving to present herself as a conservative activist, fighting political issues such as pro-abortion-rights laws, transgender bathrooms, and the building of the U.S southern border wall, among other issues. All the while, she documented this “activism” in a show she launched on YouTube called “Kait’s Unsafe Space” on a website called “Liberty Hangout.”

Bennett gains a lot of attention every day, but what really gets under many people’s skin is how she proceeds to say she is a victim of racism and violence due to the many negative comments on her videos. 

“I was not expecting the blatant racism that was thrown at me,” said Bennett while appearing on “Fox and Friends” in 2018.

But here is why I feel Bennett has missed the point on what people were trying to say when they called her privileged.

According to a study conducted by Frank Edwards of Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice, African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. This is without mentioning the number of hate crimes people of color go through. According to the FBI, 59.6% of crimes committed in the U.S occur due to a person’s certain ethnicity.

This is a prime example of the white privilege many accused Bennett of taking advantage of. The fact that she was able to walk around campus with a big rifle while the policy took place a few weeks before her graduation photos and did not face any type of consequences is why she is considered privileged. Unlike the many Black men and women who were killed while unarmed and are still being killed to this day, she was indeed armed and got to go back to her family the next day unharmed. That’s her privilege. 

Peggy McIntosh, the researcher behind “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” described white privilege as conferring “dominance because of one’s race or sex.” She explained how this privilege doesn’t have anything to do with one’s wealth but it does have to do with someone’s advantages in life due to their skin color. 

“Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color,” wrote McIntosh.

Yet, with this much evidence proving her privilege, Bennett continues to make herself the “victim” of the comments she provokes. 

On Feb. 17, she visited Ohio University with the goal of asking students questions about presidents due to that day being Presidents Day. After being there for a few minutes, many students came to protest her presence by expressing their views against her. 

“I am a woman of color,” said Bennett during the alleged riot. This comment was another one that stirred a lot of controversy as this comment was made as a way she protest to transgendered people or non-binary people. She used the term “I am a woman of color,” insinuating that if people can change their gender she can then change her ethnicity, which to me, one thing has nothing to do with the other. These types of comments were made in one of her early videos at Liberty Hangout, where she questioned students on whether or not transgender bathrooms should be allowed on campus.

“If you were to walk into the women’s restroom and you saw a woman with a penis using a urinal, would you be concerned, or would you accept it and be inclusive?” asked Bennett in the video, where she received an answer she wasn’t expecting. “It is none of my business,” said the student whom Bennett was interviewing and after receiving the answer she decided to provoke people into answering the question in a way to show her disagreement on the subject.

These are only a few of the controversial comments and statements Bennett has made in the media which further prove her privilege since no university officials have put a stop to her campus visits after the outrage she causes upon visiting them not to mention the amount of legal issue she could but doesn’t get in by causing so many disturbings on public protests.

However, after the Ohio University incident, many opinion writers and online papers wrote about the protest. Included in these was the opinion of Ana Kasparian, host of a news and commentary show called “The Young Turks,” who has commented on Bennett’s videos in the past. In discussing her stance on the riot, she explained how Bennett made herself the victim after basing her whole show on provoking self-proclaimed liberal college students on their campuses. 

“When people exercise their First Amendment rights, which includes speaking up against whoever is showing the provoking, they claim that they are the victim,” said Kasparian regarding Bennett’s comments on Twitter after the protest.

After the protest at Ohio University, Bennett claimed she was the victim of a riot because she was a Trump supporter. Bennett tweeted about how the police at Ohio University were not protecting her while the “riot” was going on and even tweeted out her plan to return to the campus with many pro-gun owners with her.

This tweet to many and myself is an example of a terroristic threat according to Cornell University defining a terroristic threat as something that “causes serious public inconvenience or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.” This defines the inconvenience she caused within the community of students by committing a crime by violating the university’s policy on campus visitors that do not allow “non student visitor behavior deemed detrimental to the university community.”

Ohio University said in a statement that police were monitoring the scene and that the protest wasn’t a riot and there were no arrests because the scene wasn’t violent and nobody got hurt. Ohio University claimed that students were just exercising their first amendment right--the same claim that Bennett uses to defend herself against criticism.

As the word “riot” is being thrown around in regards to the protest against Bennett, I would like to educate that audience and Bennett herself on an example of a real riot. 

On Sept. 20, 2016, a 43-year-old Black man, Keith Lamont Scott, was shot and killed by police in Charlotte, NC. This caused a massive riot in Uptown Charlotte, where 45 people were arrested, many local businesses were destroyed and many people were injured during the course of events. This riot was such a huge story that it made it to national news. I remember being dismissed from class way too early due to how close Uptown Charlotte was from my university and how dangerous it was for students to even be outside of campus while violent actions were taking place. 

So that is what a real riot feels like. People screaming for you to get out of their campus because of your homophobic, transphobic and pro-Trump views while being protected by a personal security guard may feel uncomfortable. But it is not a riot.

As a person of color and a liberal, it infuriates me to see how Bennett gets away with many of the things she does that highlight and prove her privilege. Her harassment of my fellow liberals is painful to see and knowing Bennett supports a president who insulted women by expressing how they should be “grabbed by the pussy” while also calling African nations “shithole countries,” disgusts me. 

Instead of using the platform gained by her ignorance and controversy to speak out against real injustices she decides to use it to provoke others to achieve embarrassment from those who do not agree with her. Of course, being a republican isn’t a bad or good thing it is just a political view however, if her goal was to educate people on the republican perspective she would go about it in a respectful way instead of a confrontational way. Due to this, I believe Bennett should check her privilege and use it to make a real change as she has a lot to learn about the real injustices out there.

So, to all of those who protested Bennett's presence on the campus of Ohio University, thank you. Thank you for standing up for minorities such as myself and for protesting to get bigotry and hatred off of your campus. I hope that all the hate that Bennett continues to encourage provokes people to come together again to protest toxic behavior such as hers and that of the president she supports.