On February 14, 2018, Kashuv was present at the school where the
Stoneman Douglas High School shooting occurred. He was 16 years old, attending his junior year. In April 2018, Kashuv said he was questioned and intimidated by a Broward County officer and a school security officer after he posted on his Twitter account a photo of himself at a shooting range with an
AR-15 rifle. Kashuv explained that he wanted to learn the "physical mechanics" of guns and how to defend himself, as well as to "show people it's people that are the issue, not guns". Marjory Stoneman Douglas High history teacher Greg Pittman said the gesture was in poor taste, which Kashuv denied. Kashuv is a supporter of the
Republican Party. He supported Donald Trump in the
2016 United States presidential election, endorsing Trump's ideas about immigration and construction of the
Mexico–United States border wall, and Trump's "America First" approach. By March 2018, Kashuv was in the process of producing a mobile phone application, ReachOut, which aims to help students who have emotional struggles reach out for help. In April 2018, Kashuv criticized
CNN for being biased because one of their contributors,
Joan Walsh, had liked a tweet by
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter died in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Kashuv also gave a speech in April 2019 at the yearly meeting of the
National Rifle Association of America (NRA). The
Miami Herald in July 2018 wrote that the conservative
Second Amendment supporter Kashuv had "gained a national following as a counterweight to the
March For Our Lives" movement.
Turning Point USA Kashuv became director of high school outreach of the conservative Kashuv invited Turning Point USA founder
Charlie Kirk to address Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, but the school did not permit the activity. Kashuv helped to plan the organization's 2018 High School Leadership Summit for over 800 students, and was lauded by Fox News in July 2018 as "a role model for young conservatives across the country". That month, Kirk described Kashuv as a "a national spokesperson for one of the most controversial and divisive issues of our time", and as "probably the most hated pro-gun advocate at the time besides
Dana Loesch", a spokesperson of the NRA. Kashuv denied that his resignation was related to his racist remarks.
Gun rights views Kashuv supports the Second Amendment. Before the mass shooting, Kashuv supported zero gun restrictions, but after the mass shooting, Kashuv changed his position to favor much "stricter background checks and mental evaluations" for gun purchases, but still disagrees with banning any type of gun. He also does not support restrictions on standard capacity magazines. Regarding the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Kashuv did not blame gun laws, instead blaming the failures of law enforcement for failing to either stop the gunman during the shooting, or even identify the gunman as a threat before the shooting happened. Kashuv endorses the idea that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a
good guy with a gun"; he has advocated for schools to eliminate gun-free zones, and for policies allowing teachers and school staff to be armed. Kashuv said he agrees with fellow student activists
David Hogg,
Cameron Kasky and
X González that gun deaths and school shootings need to be stopped, "and that shouldn't be delegitimized, ever". Kashuv's stated solutions to improve the situation differ from Hogg and Kasky's, but he has called for a debate with them to find "common middle ground". Kashuv has also said he felt frustrated that he was not invited to speak at the
March for Our Lives event, suggesting it was because of his political views. Kashuv has described himself as speaking "calmly and logically" in contrast to "inflammatory language" used by other student activists. Kashuv believed that the "initial movement, in its purest form" coming out of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting "was amazing". He said that "It got corrupted because now it's represented as anti-gun and anti-NRA." He described March for Our Lives as being "anti-Republican" and said that the NRA does not have as much "evil power" over politicians as their critics believe. Kashuv himself was criticized by the students in
Never Again MSD for his views on gun rights. In response, Kashuv called for a boycott of
MSNBC, since Eichenwald had stated that he was an MSNBC contributor on his Twitter biography, although Eichenwald had actually not been an MSNBC contributor since a month prior. One of MSNBC's sponsors,
Proactiv, removed its advertisements from the network in response. Eichenwald apologized to Kashuv, claiming that his criticism of Kashuv was a case of mistaken identity because he had taken Kashuv to be another teenager who had frequently insulted him before. Kashuv accepted Eichenwald's apology. In April 2018, Shapiro published emails Eichenwald sent to him which included a statement that Kashuv was "in desperate need of psychiatric help". In those emails, Eichenwald stated that he was a contributing editor at
Vanity Fair, but
Vanity Fair issued a statement saying that Eichenwald was not a contributor at the time. == Personal life ==