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.

Early life
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 didn't succeed in October 2017, she resigned. In May 2018, Bennett graduated with a degree in biology from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.

Media attention
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. One student interviewed used the attention to raise money for charity.

In February 2020, Bennett went to Ohio University to ask trivia questions for President's Day, but was confronted by a large crowd of college students opposing her. The visit turned into a confrontation with student protesters, forcing her off campus within two hours, leading to a strong online reaction and increased media attention, and further establishing her as a conservative media figure. A September 2020 visit by Bennett to the University of Central Florida caused a disturbance due to a similar confrontation with protesters, culminating in a police escort to leave the campus.

Later in 2020, it was reported that Liberty Hangout, a media organization founded by Bennett, made comments in 2016 denying the Holocaust in a deleted post on Twitter.

Personal life
Bennett became engaged in 2019 to Justin Moldow, the founder of Liberty Hangout. The couple later married in a March 2020 ceremony. In 2021 she announced her conversion to Roman Catholicism. On April 6, 2022, she announced the birth of their first child on Twitter.