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. Bennett received media attention in 2018 for open-carrying an AR-10 rifle at Kent State University after graduating.

She and her husband run Liberty Hangout, which initially described itself as a libertarian media outlet, but beginning in 2017 has self described as conservative. She has contributed to far-right conspiracy theorist and fake news website InfoWars. Liberty Hangout has continued to distance itself from libertarians, as well as libertarian ideology, since at least 2016.

Media attention

Bennett was the president of the Kent State chapter of Turning Point USA; however, after a protest against campus safe spaces backfired in October 2017, she resigned. In 2018, Bennett posed for her graduation photo 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. Later that year, Bennett organized an open-carry rally at Kent State. The university released a statement that a cease and desist had been issued against advertising the event, as Bennett had not attempted to register the event with the university.

Following her initial protest of Kent State, Bennett became a correspondent for InfoWars. Due to her affiliation with InfoWars, she was excluded from a campaign event for Bernie Sanders. She returned to Kent State in November to host a discussion on gun rights. As social media users mainly associated Bennett with her gun rights activism, many media publications have referenced her "Gun Girl" nickname.

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 on the issue of resources for transgender people in bathrooms. The clips quickly became popular on social media, with users entertained by the dichotomy between Bennett and the interviewees' reactions to the topic. One student seen in the interviews used the online attention to raise money for charity.

In February 2020, Kaitlin Bennett went to Ohio University to ask trivia questions for President's Day, but was confronted by an extremely large crowd of college students opposing her. Drinks and other objects, including toilet paper, were hurled at her. Chants of "where's your diaper?" and "shit your pants” were heard in reference to an unsubstantiated rumor that she defecated her pants while attending a Kent State frat party. In October, Bennett was similarly ridiculed when visiting the University of Central Florida.

Holocaust denial controversy

Bennett's Liberty Hangout outlet received criticism for statements on Twitter supporting antisemitism, Holocaust denial, monarchy, and disfranchisement. On January 30, 2016, the Liberty Hangout Twitter account released a tweet that ran a poll to the public asking the following, "Asking out of curiosity. Do you believe the Holocaust happened as we've been told?" with two possible options for twitter users to select, "Yes", or "Not exactly." A twitter user commented in response, "What do you think??", to which the Liberty Hangout twitter account responded, "It doesn't seem possible that 6 million were killed." Media outlet Snopes reached out to Liberty Hangout for a comment without a response before the post was deleted.

Personal life

In May 2018, Bennett graduated with a degree in biology from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.

Bennett became engaged to Justin Moldow, the founder of Liberty Hangout, in 2019. They married in a Catholic ceremony in March 2020. In December 2021, she announced on Twitter that she was pregnant with their first child.