In the almost 20 years since the
killings at Columbine High School in April 1999, we have learned a few things.
We have learned that the rhetoric around shootings and gun control has remained
the same. In the immediate aftermath of the carnage, it has always been “too
soon” to bring up gun control. “Thoughts and prayers” have been distributed in
abundance, and any efforts to steer the conversation towards legislative
measures to prevent future massacres have been met with accusations of
“politicizing a tragedy.” Columbine was a watershed moment in the history of
guns and schools in America. Yet, two of America’s worst school shootings,
Virginia Tech in 2007, and Sandy Hook in 2012, happened after Columbine. In the
20 years since the worst mass shooting in UK history in Dunblane, Scottland in
1996, where 16 children and their teacher were killed, there have been zero
school shootings in the UK. In Australia, after 35 people were killed with a
semi-automatic weapon in a popular tourist area in Port Arthur, Tasmania,
rapid-fire guns were banned. Since that incident, Australia has had zero mass
shootings, where a mass shooting is one in which 5 or more people are killed.
Assault weapons, whose only purpose is to decimate, are legal in the US, and
appear to be the weapon of choice in the majority of recent mass shootings. We
have learned, in the almost 20 years since Columbine, that a powerful
organization run by entitled white men can buy over politicians, year after
year, to squash common sense gun laws protecting citizens. We have learned that
year after year, after Sandy Hook and San Bernadino, and Isla Vista and Orlando
and Las Vegas and Charleston and Sutherland, Texas, gun control advocates have
been silenced by the GOP minions of the NRA. The massacre at Parkland, Florida,
however, is somehow different. A tipping point has been reached; there is a new
perspective, and it is gaining momentum.
In addition to the blood on its
hands for all the youth killed in schools and colleges, the NRA, along with the
GOP in its pocket, has been subjecting children to trauma that is akin to what
combat veterans on the front lines of a war might face: running for their
lives, seeing peers mowed down by high-velocity bullets geared to annihilate,
cowering inside closets or behind furniture for hours, not knowing if they will
ever get out of there alive. Having grown up in the backdrop of the carnage at
Sandy Hook and a culture that takes gun safety in school very seriously, but
not gun reform seriously, these children- the survivors of the massacre at Stoneman
Douglas in Parkland- are aware that the adults in power have done nothing to
mitigate decades of school shootings. They realize that they have to advocate
for themselves. The NRA’s ploy to divert attention from the real problem with
cries of “too soon” isn’t going to work on these children who thrive on instant
communication. The GOP’s holier-than-thou stance of offering “thoughts and
prayers” because they have nothing of substance to say in defense of
normalizing the presence of assault weapons in civilians’ hands will not hold
these children back: When Trump offered, in a tweet, his "prayers
and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida
shooting. No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an
American school," Sarah
Chadwick, a survivor from Parkland responded:
“I
don’t want your condolences you fucking piece of shit, my friends and teachers
were shot. Multiple of my fellow
classmates are dead.
Do
something instead of sending prayers.
Prayers won’t fix this. But Gun control will prevent it from happening again.”
Later, this same girl reached out
again:
“Dear
Donald Trump, I’m the 16 year old girl who tweeted you and told you i didn’t want your condolences, I wanted gun
control, and went viral because of it. I heard you’re coming to my community soon and I would like to express my
opinions on gun control to you face to
face.”
Three days after the killings, at a
rally outside the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale where students and
teachers of Stoneman Douglas had gathered to make their voices heard, Emma
Gonzales, a senior at Douglas spoke about “calling B.S” on all the lies
preventing common sense gun laws from being adopted. She said: “If all our
government and president can do is send ‘thoughts and prayers,’ then it’s time
for victims to be the change that we need to see.” She added: “To every
politician taking donations from the NRA- Shame. On. You,” at which point the
crowd erupted into chants of “shame on you.” She reminded the audience that in
February 2017, Trump repealed an Obama-era regulation that “would have made it
easier to block the sale of firearms to people with certain mental illnesses.”
She pointed out that “we need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just
a mental health issue.” Then emotionally she added that “he wouldn’t have hurt
that many students with a knife.” Emma Gonzales then went on to attacking the
government and the NRA for its bullshit, with the crowd responding in refrain- “we
call B.S”:
“The
people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids
seem to be the only ones who notice and are prepared to call B.S.
Politicians
who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the N.R.A., telling us
nothing could ever be done to prevent this: we call B.S….
They
say that tougher gun laws do not prevent gun violence: we call B.S.”
In
her rousing speech outside the Fort Lauderdale courthouse, Emma Gonzales
declared that “we are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks not
because we are going to be another statistic about mass shootings in America
but because….we are going to be the last mass shooting.”
In
the four days since the shooting, groups of students from across the country have
already organized efforts to make their personal tragedy their political quest.
On Saturday, March 24th, the March For Our Lives will take place in
Washington DC and other major cities where school children and their families
will march “to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we
end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today.” The mission
statement of this event further targets the non-action of politicians: “In the
tragic wake of the 17 lives brutally cut short in Florida, politicians are
telling us that now is not the time to talk about guns. March For Our Lives
believes the time is now.” Cameron Kasky, a junior from Stoneman Douglas, and
one the students behind the march has given several news interviews about the online
movement that fellow students are organizing called #NEVERAGAIN MSD. In an interview on NPR, Kasky held Florida’s governor and senator accountable for the shooting: “And our lawmakers Rick
Scott and Marco Rubio - they have the blood of 17 people on their hands, and we
are not apologizing for telling them that they're gone. It’s over with them.”
Kasky elaborated in another interview along with a panel of 4 other student
organizers including Emma Gonzales that their aim is to "create a new normal where there’s a badge of shame
on any politician who’s accepting money from the NRA, no matter where they are.
Because at the end of the day, the NRA is promoting and fostering this gun
culture….” In an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, Kasky aimed again at
the NRA – “I think that after every shooting, the NRA sends them (the GOP) a
memo saying ‘send your thoughts and prayers,’ let’s not talk about it now….”
The students from Parkland have taken matters into their own hands because “the
adults in office have let us down.” To Trump they said: “You haven’t taken a
single bill for mental health care or gun control and passed it. And that’s
pathetic. We’ve seen a government shutdown. We’ve seen tax reform but nothing
to save our children’s lives.”
April
20, 2018 will be the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. Most of the
children organizing this new movement towards gun reform hadn’t even been born when
Columbine happened. Yet, they are the ones who are now leading the way, and the
adults are following: In “An open letter to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,” Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and
Yasmine Taeb, DNC committeewoman from Virginia who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School said:
“We give you our word that the
Democratic Party will work to prevent anything like what happened at your
school from happening again.”
It’s now time for the Republicans to follow suit.
To cut their purse strings with the NRA and support common sense gun laws. If
they don’t, they will be voted out of office, because, as Cameron Kasky pointed
out in an op-ed on CNN “my generation won’t stand for this.”
In
less than a week after the tragedy at Parkland, the children of Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School have inspired a national following to revisit gun
control. Imagine what they will do in the months to come. The tide is changing.
Spread the word. Join and support their movement.
Links:
#Never
Again
March
for our Lives
https://www.marchforourlives.com/
Emma Gonzales' speech
Parkland
students on Face the Nation
