By: Teresa Mull

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor Kyle Kashuv has been an outspoken opponent to the gun control hysteria that’s surfaced in the wake of the Parkland, Florida tragedy. He’s risen as a refreshing contrast to the likes of anti-gun advocates David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, appearing on major news networks and meeting with President Trump to discuss legislation to keep students safe while upholding the Second Amendment. And last weekend, Kashuv flew across the country to take a girl who admires his politics to prom.

“More than 1,600 miles away in Nebraska, Fidan Ibrahimova, a senior at Lincoln Southeast High School, was following Kyle and thought he was brave to voice an opinion so contrary to many of his classmates,” The Kansas City Star reported.

Ibrahimova implored Kashuv on Twitter to be her date. Ben Shapiro helped her garner 5,000 retweets, and Kashuv ended up flying to Nebraska for the dance.

“Before the prom festivities, the two students met for about 30 minutes with Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts in his Omaha office, the Omaha World-Herald reported,” the Star reported. “The governor called Kyle an impressive young man, Ricketts’ spokesman Taylor Gage told the World-Herald.”

Kashuv’s activism, Vox.com’s Jane Coaston reports, “comes from an honest place: He wants to balance stopping another school shooting with maintaining the Second Amendment. He told me he’s done the research on different gun control proposals, and opposes nearly all of them, telling me that ideas lifted up by his Parkland classmates (like lowering magazine capacity or reinstating the federal assault weapons ban) are ‘likely unconstitutional and likely statistically devoid of benefit.’”

“I am super conservative on the Second Amendment because I realize that the Second Amendment protects all the other amendments,” Kashuv told Vox. “I genuinely believe, with all my heart, that what I am doing will save lives and is the best way to avenge [the Parkland victims’] deaths. I mean what I say, and I am sincere. I am doing this to avenge my friends that lost their lives.”

Teresa Mull is editor of Gunpowder Magazine. Contact her at [email protected].