Fred Guttenberg, Jaime Guttenberg's Dad, Says Brett Kavanaugh Snubbed Him at His Hearing

Senate Holds Confirmation Hearing For Brett Kavanugh To Be Supreme Court Justice

(Image credit: Drew Angerer)

published 5 September 2018

In the seven months since a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 people dead, Fred Guttenberg, the father of Parkland victim Jaime Guttenberg, has been a leading voice in the gun control debate. After Jaime's death in February, Guttenberg told MarieClaire.com that he'd spend the rest of his life fighting for common-sense gun control. According to a tweet from Guttenberg, the activist approached the Supreme Court nominee during his Tuesday hearing—he is a guest of Senator Dianne Feinstein—and was snubbed.

"Just walked up to Judge Kavanaugh as morning session ended," Guttenberg wrote on Twitter. "Put out my hand to introduce myself as Jaime Guttenberg's dad. He pulled his hand back, turned his back to me and walked away. I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence."

Footage of the incident shows Kavanaugh visibly stopping to listen to Guttenberg trying to introduce himself, and then turning away. White House press staffer Raj Shah claimed on Twitter that security intervened before Kavanaugh had a chance to respond to Guttenberg, however. "As Judge Kavanaugh left for his lunch break, an unidentified individual approached him. Before the Judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened," he wrote.

Kavanaugh has made clear in previous rulings that he supports what he believes to be the constitutional right to bear arms. In a 2011 ruling, considered the best indicator of how Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh would rule on firearm cases, the judge dissented with a D.C. ban on some semi-automatic weapons, describing it as unconstitutional. "Gun bans and gun regulations that are not longstanding or sufficiently rooted in text, history, and tradition are not consistent with the Second Amendment individual right," he wrote.

Here is the photo of me trying to shake Kavanaugh's hand. https://t.co/5MtQxq5wzaSeptember 4, 2018

In other words: One American's right to own a gun supersedes the right of another American to protect himself from them, according to Kavanaugh's ruling.

Wow, here you can hear @fred_guttenberg telling Kavanaugh that his daughter "was murdered in Parkland," and Kavanaugh whirls and walks away pic.twitter.com/VdkTij2VdpSeptember 4, 2018

Guttenberg has gone head-to-head with other anti-gun control public figures since the death of his 14-year-old daughter. Following the massacre, Guttenberg addressed Senator Marco Rubio directly: "My daughter, running down the hallway at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was shot in the back with an assault weapon—the weapon of choice," he told the senator. "It is too easy to get. It is a weapon of war. The fact that you can't stand with everybody in this building and say that—I'm sorry."

Jenny is the Digital Director at Marie Claire. A graduate of Leeds University, and a native of London, she moved to New York in 2012 to attend the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She was the first intern at Bustle when it launched in 2013 and spent five years building out its news and politics department. In 2018 she joined Marie Claire, where she held the roles of Deputy Digital Editor and Director of Content Strategy before becoming Digital Director. Working closely with Marie Claire's exceptional editorial, audience, commercial, and e-commerce teams, Jenny oversees the brand's digital arm, with an emphasis on driving readership. When she isn't editing or knee-deep in Google Analytics, you can find Jenny writing about television, celebrities, her lifelong hate of umbrellas, or (most likely) her dog, Captain. In her spare time, she writes fiction: her first novel, the thriller EVERYONE WHO CAN FORGIVE ME IS DEAD, was published with Minotaur Books (UK) and Little, Brown (US) in February 2024 and became a USA Today bestseller. She has also written extensively about developmental coordination disorder, or dyspraxia , which she was diagnosed with when she was nine.