Last Wednesday there was yet another fatal school shooting on American soil. At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, 19-year-old Nicholas Cruz claimed the lives of 17 students and teachers. This marks the eighteenth school shooting in the United States since the beginning of 2018, just over a month and a half ago.
With this tragedy comes the inevitable wave of social media condolences with short comments followed by #thoughtsandprayers. It is not lost on the students of Stoneman Douglas that this superficial pity allows for government officials to pull blame from gun legislation and say things like, “Now is not the time to talk about gun control.” This was the official statement of the White House last fall on October 2, after 58 people were gunned-down in Las Vegas.
At the time, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders quipped that “policy discussions” should not follow a “day of mourning.” When pro-gun legislators are asked weeks later about the tragedies, they retort that there are no laws that would be able to prevent these massacres, often reciting a popular slogan for the NRA, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” But the students of Stoneman Douglas say no more.
Emma Gonzales, a student survivor, voiced her frustration in a rally held by the school just four days after the attack. “They say that no law could prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred, we call B.S! That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works, we call B.S.!”
Later that day, Cameron Kasky echoed those same statements in a group interview of students at Stoneman Douglas held by CNN. “They have us thinking that it’s inevitable, that we can’t do anything to stop it, that it’s too difficult, we’re done with that.”
Throughout the week, more and more high school and college students, as well as parents, have started expressing their opinions on gun violence, often pointing out ridiculous paradoxes, in modern American legislation, that citizens have come to accept. In the same CNN group interview, a Stoneman Douglas junior, Sawyer Garrity, expressed anger at one of these peculiarities, “How is it that someone who isn’t allowed to buy alcohol legally is allowed to buy a war weapon, like, where does that make sense?”
The majority of Florida’s senators and congressmen are known as voracious supporters of the Second Amendment; many of them are currently working with the NRA to loosen laws that oppose the concealed carrying of firearms.
The same non-profit who is responsible for the Women’s March is now working with students around the United States and organizing peaceful protests to encourage lawmakers to create stricter gun regulations. On March 14, a month after the initial shooting, students across the nation are encouraged to walk out of class for 17 minutes at 10 a.m. to show solidarity. Whether or not emotional gestures like these will persuade local lawmakers remains to be seen.
While pro-guns bills may continue to become laws, one thing is clear, the time for American citizens to send #thoughtsandprayers and move on, is over.
There will be a second transnational march on April 20, learn more on the Twitter page, @schoolwalkoutus. If you wish to support the students, there is a national anti-gun campaign on change.org that needs 500,000 signatures.