Kaitlin Bennett

Kaitlin Marie Bennett (born October 15, 1995), also known as the Kent State gun girl, is an American gun rights activist and conservative social media personality. She received media attention in 2018 for open-carrying an AR-10 rifle at Kent State University after graduating. Bennett and her husband run Liberty Hangout. Initially described as a libertarian media outlet, the website later became more politically conservative. Bennett was the president of the Kent State chapter of Turning Point USA; however, after an event where a member of her chapter publicly wore a diaper to protest campus safe spaces backfired in October 2017, she resigned. In May 2018, Bennett graduated with a degree in biology from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. In 2018, Bennett posed for her graduation photo from the university holding an AR-10 long gun in front of the university sign. She stated that as a student at Kent State, she should have been able to open-carry for self-defense, citing the 1970 Kent State shootings where Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed students protesting the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. As social media users mainly associated Bennett with her gun rights activism, many media publications referenced her "Gun Girl" nickname. Later in 2018, Bennett organized an open-carry rally at the college. The university released a statement that a cease and desist order had been issued against advertising the event, as Bennett had not attempted to register it with the university. Following her initial protest of Kent State, Bennett became a correspondent for InfoWars. Due to her affiliation with the extremist site, she was excluded from a campaign event for Bernie Sanders. She returned to the university in November of that year to host a discussion on gun rights. In January 2020, clips surfaced online of her 2019 interviews with University of Kentucky students. Originally posted by Liberty Hangout with the title "College Students Have No Morals", the videos show Bennett questioning the students about resources for transgender people in bathrooms which attracted significant online attention.