When is it okay to talk back to someone who keeps falsely branding you a murderer? Well, that depends on whether he’s being funded by Republicans or Democrats.

Ever since the shooting last month at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., a student named David Hogg has become the new face of the gun-confiscation movement. He’s everywhere you look, telling you that if you disagree with him, you’ve got blood on your hands. If you’ve managed to miss his schtick, here’s a quick recap from David Rutz at the Washington Free Beacon:

Subtle, right?

Now, I’m not going to blame this young man for feeling angry and helpless after a shooting at his school. There was a shooting at my high school when I was about his age, maybe a little younger. It was a looooong time ago, but as I remember it: A couple of guys I didn’t know got into a feud over a girl. Typical high school stuff. But then one kid went home at lunchtime, got his dad’s pistol, and came back to the school cafeteria and shot the other kid. It wasn’t fatal, thank God, but it was still terrifying. I wasn’t there when it happened, but it was in a place where I’d always felt safe. (Other than the occasional food poisoning and regular body shaming.) That shooting really shook up everybody at my school, and I couldn’t go back into the cafeteria for a long time after that.

If you had stuck a TV camera in my face right after it happened, I probably would’ve said a lot of the same things David Hogg is saying now. “Ban all the guns, or else you hate kids.” It’s as simple as that, right? All the problems in the world are that clear cut when you’re 17 years old, physically and/or emotionally.

Hogg is saying all the things gun grabbers want to hear, and the rest of us had better not disagree with him or we’re child-hating monsters. He’s living proof that America should lower the voting age to 16 — seriously, lefties are saying that — yet he’s not old enough to take a little bit of what he’s dishing out.

In fact, our media gatekeepers seem to think Hogg should be allowed to say whatever he wants without question, no matter how transparently false it is. Here’s CNN’s Brian Stelter, admitting just that:

“There’s always that balance.” Yes, sometimes you just have to let people say things you know aren’t true. That’s balance, when you work for CNN and you’re talking about gun control. As they keep reminding us: “This is an apple.”

Which brings me to Laura Ingraham. I’m not a big fan of hers, and I winced when I saw this yesterday:

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY — Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018

I don’t particularly care where this kid ends up going to college. (Assuming he doesn’t turn pro right out of high school, like LeBron. Hogg already spends more time on CNN and MSNBC than some of their anchors, so they might as well give him a show.) And I find it a bit gauche for Ingraham to pick on him about it.

But we only know about the UCLA thing because Hogg told us about it. He wanted to be famous, and he wanted to accuse people who disagree with him of doing things they haven’t done. Well, this is what can happen when you get up in front of the whole country and tell outrageous lies about a huge group of law-abiding Americans. They might just get fed up. They might just hurt your feelings.

And it looks like that’s exactly what happened:

Soooo @IngrahamAngle what are your biggest advertisers … Asking for a friend. #BoycottIngramAdverts — David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 29, 2018

That’s right: The 17-year-old boy is calling for a boycott of insurance companies and Sleep Number beds.

I’m sure Hogg thinks he’s Speaking Truth to Power™. But what he’s really doing is abusing his newfound power to lash out at someone who bruised his ego. This isn’t about protecting people from gun violence. This is about his pride.

In other words, he’s acting like a 17-year-old kid. Which is why I never took him seriously in the first place.

No, adults shouldn’t be picking on schoolchildren. No, David Hogg didn’t do a Nazi salute at that rally. No, he’s not actually 25 years old. No, he’s not a “crisis actor.”

And no, adults shouldn’t be using kids as human shields in the first place, in a cynical attempt to deflect criticism of their political agenda.

It’s a variation on Jon Stewart’s old “Clown nose off, clown nose on” technique. We were all supposed to pay attention to Stewart because he had something important to say. But when his facts and logic were called into question, he’d retreat: “Calm down, I’m just a comic!” It was patently dishonest, and he made a highly lucrative career out of it. He blazed the trail for people like young Mr. Hogg.

I fully support David Hogg’s right to express his opinion in the United States of America. And for all I care, he can bring down Laura Ingraham and anybody else on Fox News. They don’t speak for me, and I don’t owe them anything.

But if this youngster wants to talk like a big boy, he needs to learn how to take his lumps like a big boy. If he’s going to declare war, he runs the risk of hearing things he doesn’t like.

As long as this kid is keeping lists of names, I hope he remembers all the adults who keep pushing him in front of the cameras. Sure, Mike Bloomberg and Everytown and the rest of them are there for him now. But what happens when he’s no longer useful to them? Where will they be then? If he thinks this ride is going to last forever, he should Google “Cindy Sheehan.”

P.S. All of what I just said also goes for Hogg’s classmate Kyle Kashuv, who’s on the other end of the ideological spectrum. Kashuv has made his share of mistakes as well, and he’s been taken to task. That’s just how it goes. As Florida senatorial candidate Charlie Crist used to say, before he got stomped by Marco Rubio: Welcome to the NFL.

P.P.S. Ingraham has now apologized. Hogg doesn’t seem to be interested.