David Hogg is the go-to for the anti-gun zealots these days. He’s like their anti-gun zealot messiah, at least in their mind. They’re convinced that this kid can take them to the promised land of finally enacting gun control legislation in this country.

Unfortunately, their messiah is an idiot.

It’s not that he’s young that’s the problem. It’s that he’s ignorant, and that’s not an artifact of his youth. His schoolmate, Kyle Kashuv, is extremely well informed and educated on the subject of guns, and I believe Kyle is younger than Hogg, so clearly age isn’t the problem.

Instead, I think it’s been people feeding nonsense into the kid’s head, and he’s buying into his own press enough that he doesn’t know how little he knows on the subject. Take, for example, his five-point plan to supposedly end gun violence in this country.

Comment why you do or don’t support our 5 point platform below I want to try responding to as many people as I can.

1. CDC funding for research into gun violance
2. Universal Background checks
3. Digitization of ATF records
4. High-Capacity magazine ban
5. Assault weapons ban

— David Hogg 📢 (@davidhogg111) May 11, 2018

Oh, let’s break this one down.

First, the CDC is funded to research into gun violence. What they’re not funded to do is conduct research designed to promote gun control. Gun research, however, isn’t forbidden. In fact, it happens at the CDC even today.

What no one should want is the CDC to take a political stance on an issue where research is involved. Let the research show what it shows and let policymakers argue about the rest.

Universal background checks are a thing, and it’s something that I fear we’re going to be saddled with sooner or later. However, you’re deluded if you think it’ll change anything.

Remarkably few gun sales are conducted without a background check in this country. The vast majority take place in gun stores with an FFL holder. Thus, background checks are taking place. The same is true with most gun show purchases which, contrary to media claims, are predominantly made with FFL holders. Thus, a background check is required.

Besides, Hogg and company have yet to show that an appreciable number of bad guys are getting their guns via face-to-face transfers.

His third point, digitization of ATF records is an interesting one. You see, this one troubles me for one simple reason. Once you digitize ATF records, you can then put them in a central database. At that point, in conjunction with universal background checks, you now have a firearm registry, which is illegal and something we all should be concerned about.

This is especially true in an age when it seems no data is secure. Do you really want bad people finding out who has guns in their community? That’s like publishing a list of which houses to rob when no one is home.

Nope.

Number four on Hogg’s list is an end to so-called “high capacity magazines.”

Well, if Hogg had actually been in the building where the Parkland shooting was taking place instead of safe and sound some distance away, he might have seen that a lack of high capacity magazines didn’t stop the killer from mass slaughter. All this will do is create an inconvenience for law-abiding people who don’t want to have to reload as often. That’s it. It won’t stop criminals. It won’t keep mass shooters from killing a lot of people. It won’t solve anything.

Last is his call for an assault weapon ban. Hogg seems to think that this will have some impact on crime. Well, we had an assault weapon ban for ten years, from 1994-2004. You know what happened?

Nothing.

Crime was already trending downward before the ban was enacted, and it continued downward at roughly the same rate. Mass shootings weren’t even impacted by the assault weapon ban.

The only purpose of an assault weapon ban is to make it difficult or impossible for law-abiding citizens to own a gun that some people are scared of. There was no impact on crime last time, and there won’t be an impact this time. Like it or not, gun-grabbers, the bad guys aren’t lining up to buy AR-15s. They want small, concealable handguns, not big old rifles, as a general rule.

So literally none of his solutions are nearly as workable and helpful as he likes to think, and that’s an artifact of pure, unadulterated ignorance.

Then again, if the kid weren’t ignorant, he wouldn’t be anti-gun in the first place.