On Feb. 19 in Washington D.C., demonstrators hold signs during a “lie-in” supporting gun control reform near the White House.
The aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida has been nothing but a push for change. Survivors of the shooting have come together and started a movement called “Never Again” to push for stricter gun control laws.
After the Parkland shooting, students turned their anguish into activism and have since been speaking up and calling out politicians for not doing anything about gun violence.
President Donald Trump’s speech after the shooting provided no resolution or proposition to the matter, only giving the Parkland kids more inspiration to fight for a change. Trump used Twitter to blame the Russia investigation for diverting the FBI’s attention away from the report on the shooter, Nikolas Cruz.
Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2018
Trump then went on to give his condolences, without proposing anything, after taking 24 hours to recognize the massacre.
Since the shooting, students such as Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg have been labelled by the right-wing media as “crisis actors.” Right-wingers have decided that these students are merely just puppets from the Democratic party to push the left-wing agenda.
Imagine watching 14 of your classmates and three of your faculty get shot and killed. Imagine living in terror as you hide in an auditorium for hours, not knowing if you’re going to be able to see your family again.
Now, imagine going through that, using your experiences to push for change and then being called a crisis actor.
Gonzalez and Hogg, as well as other survivors using their voices to speak out against gun violence, have taken the accusations as a mere joke and now use them to their advantage. The fact that these kids are as resilient and persistent as they are is why the National Rifle Association (NRA) should be afraid of them.
The NRA is rich and powerful - it spent more than $30 million to support Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The NRA also gave $27 million in support to 50 senators who voted against required universal background checks for firearms purchases.
This chart shows how the NRA funds for campaigns doubled in four years, all in favor of President Donald Trump and against the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. The NRA spent more than $30 million on Trump's campaign in 2016.
However, even with all of its power and wealth, the Parkland kids and everyone supporting them are convinced that this will be the time the U.S. sees change regarding gun control.
These kids should be feared because they’ve already been through hell - they know what they want and they’re willing to pay the price to get there. The Parkland students have a passion for change that hasn’t been seen before.
Gonzalez gave an eloquent, passionate speech to a crowd of students on Saturday, Feb. 17 that gave hope to those who want change. The crowd chanted, “We call BS” as Gonzalez went on to talk about how the manipulation of the government has to come to a stop:
Emma Gonzalez, student-turned-activist. Gonzalez gave a speech that declared, "We call BS" on Saturday Feb. 17.
“Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. … They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.”
Her speech was made in the presence of raw anger, and she became the voice that hasn’t been present in our country for almost two decades.
Hogg had a memorable moment when he looked into the camera and said, “We are the children. You guys are the adults. Work together, come over your politics and get something done.”
David Hogg, 17, has been using his voice to speak against companies who have ties with the NRA and has been pushing for better legislation with gun control.
He expressed his classmates had to die because adults failed to come together and act on the violence that doesn’t seem to ever stop.
The youth understand urgency in a way that adults couldn't. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement gained momentum due to teenagers taking to social media and young people are the ones who toppled dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia. This shows that young people are, and have been, at the forefront of change.
It will be hard for an NRA spokesperson to dismiss anything the Parkland kids say because they are speaking on behalf of their peers who were killed due to lazy policies. As they were personally affected by the shooting, they have a higher moral credibility just for being able to push for policy changes.
The use of social media has been a prevalent factor in the new Never Again movement, created to help them keep the issue of gun control in the media since the shooting happened.
You can't stop us you never will and you never can we have the strength and grit to last far longer than these politicians will that's for damn sure #midtermsAreComing #NeverAgain
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) February 21, 2018
Through social media, they’ve started their own movement, given press conferences and even planned a nationwide protest, March for Our Lives. The protest will take place on March 24.
The Parkland kids have been an outlier when it comes to the responses after school shootings. Dave Cullen, a journalist and author of the book “Columbine,” said in the 19 years he’s been writing about mass shootings he’s never seen a phenomenon like the Parkland students.
These kids should be feared by the NRA because they’ve made it clear that nothing is going to stop them from pushing for more gun control. As people who have already seen the worst happen, they know what they’re up against and they know exactly how to fight.
