It is a devastating narrative when children can look into to their parents’ eyes and angrily retort - You have failed us. You stand by while we are slaughtered. We are sick and tired of hypocrisy, rationalizations and the cynical inaction by your elected representatives. The bottom line is that our lives have been sold to the National Rifle Association. The time has come for us to fight our own battles.
The Parkland High School mass shooting was summed up by a Junior, Cameron Kasky,”My message for the people in office, your’e either for us or against us. We are losing our lives as the adults play around”. Ms Kasky then announced the protest march in Washington which would take place on March 24th. Another emerging leader and survivor, David Hogg, rallied the students with #Never Again. Delaney Tarr exclaimed, “Enough of thoughts and prayers… we want change”. Within a few days the students of Parkland then Florida and finally the whole country had mobilized.
How does one respond to a child who refuses to go to school till this is sorted out? How do parents feel about their children doing daily drills as to how to react when a shooter arrives on the campus? The children’s assessment to these two existential questions, is that the adults just don’t care enough about to make gun control their number one priority.
ANOTHER, (SIGH), MASS SHOOTING
The mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, the fifteenth in the first seven weeks this year and the eighth at schools, claimed seventeen dead and fifteen seriously injured. The media and society are so bored by it all that the first fourteen carnages went by unnoticed. The perpetrator, a mentally disturbed ex student, used a semi automatic rifle, the AR -15, which can fire dozens of rounds in seconds and is ideal for war and the murder of children. Its lightweight, it’s easy operability and flexibility make it the weapon of choice for mass shootings. In this butchery 150 to 200 rounds were fired. It was one of his ten guns. Guns that can easily and legally purchased by anyone over the age of eighteen. A teenager over eighteen can buy an AR -15. It is even easier on line or at a gun show where all the so called back ground checks are dispensed with.
The fact that all this is insane is irrelevant. It is just regarded as a by product of the culture, the gun culture. For justification protagonists look to their distortion of the Second Amendment, the intent of which was to be on the ready lest the British invade - not a license for anarchy. The wholesale weapon sale to the public, rather, is a product of the greed of the gun industry, its pimp the National Rifle Association, (NRA), and the lackeys they have been bought off with bribes referred to as campaign contributions. The annual thirty - three thousand gun related deaths are shrugged off as “collateral damage” of this pillar of what makes America Great.
Then there is the cynical rationalization that if one keeps the guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable this will all stop. This explanation is gaining ground and is favored by the NRA. It is the fall back position of the Republicans and the President. This solution is trotted out after every disaster but never followed through upon. The problem is that the purveyors of this cant are very slow in providing even enough funds for the normal demands of mental health care. It is further inconceivable as to how this can happen as the Republicans have proposed cutting Medicaid the largest source of funds for mental care. Just looking at one statistic gives a clue at the impracticability of this approach - thirteen percent of Americans are on anti depressants or have been on the psychotropic drug. Should they all be on the register? Most developed countries have a comparable prevalence of mental illness, yet other than in America mass shootings are uniquely rare, Canada has had only one this year.
THE RESPONSE PROTOCOL
There is an unwritten protocol for the aftermath of these bloodbaths. Firstly only if enough are dead, will there be “Breaking News” and wall to wall media coverage. Then the predicable responses to the tragedy follow from the predictable sources. The gun reformers are once again briefly heard - the Gabby Giffords. the Michael Bloombergs. The apologists blame everything and everybody other than the lax gun laws - “People kill - Not Guns” is the smug mantra of the NRA. The Democrats scream “I told you so”. The Republicans are “Not convinced that gun laws or reform could have prevented this tragedy”. However all have prayers for the unimaginable grief that the families are going through. There are tributes to the heroes in the saga who gave their lives to protect the children. Kudos are heaped on the first responders and medical personnel. There are interviews of everybody and anybody. The perpetrator’s background, personal and medical history is laid bare. Where he bought the guns is of endless fascination, heavens knows why as it is irrelevant - you can buy them anywhere. Nobody asks where he purchased the hoodie he was probably wearing.
The human tragedy is dissected, family by family. The town pulls together. Counseling teams are flown in. There are flowers in the street and videos of shattered citizens wandering aimlessly around trying to come to terms with a disaster they never thought would hit their peaceful, law abiding town. If someone has action shots taken from their cell phones the footage is run over and over and over again.
Central to it all are the Legislative mourners who more often than not appear at one or other of the regular briefings. The President offers his sympathies, admiration and support for the bereaved and the town in general. The Governor, in this instance, addressing the Parkland community in an act of magnanimity, announced that the State will pay for the funerals of the victims. The media cover the funerals which cannot bring closure to the grieving community.
It all goes on for as long as the news cycle will bear….
And then nothing changes until the next shooting where there are enough dead to earn the status of “breaking news”. Maybe it will be the twenty - fifth mass shooting of the year, the other ones being missed as they were not bloody enough to be brought to the conscious of the viewing public. But be reminded while nothing appears to be going on, in the interim some of the thirty - three thousand that die because of the easy availability of arms, are busy dying.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
For decades and after each mass shooting the cry is “What will it take to make a meaningful comprehensive approach at ending this carnage”. President Obama made it a top priority. The tragedy at Sandy Hook Connecticut in 2012 where twenty children aged six and seven were gunned down with six teachers was thought to be the final straw. Obama, the Democrats, the gun control groups gave it a full court press for reform. What could be more persuasive then the cold blooded mowing down of tiny tots? That attempt went nowhere. The most recent incident to create a Breaking News bohaai was the evil and systematic gunning down of fifty - eight concert goers while injuring five hundred in Las Vegas. That was less than six months ago and produced no changes in legislation. The shooter also possessed an arsenal including semi automatics which he converted into automatic weapon with a bump stock. Even attempts at outlawing that pernicious piece of equipment went nowhere. Trump favors bringing back the great Wild West with teachers armed so as to have shoot outs with the perpetrators!
All this begs the question as to whether anything will change following Parklands. There is however a new variable - the militancy and anger of the pupils of the school specifically and throughout the country generally.
STUDENT PROTEST
A new voice has been heard in the gun control debate. Starting at the victimized school spreading across the State of Florida and now throughout the country, school students are mobilizing. They bring a freshness and sincerity to the debate. They are unencumbered with partisan baggage and are literally one issue activists. They are all on the cusp of the voting age and as such may represent a very powerful pressure group.
In the wake of the bloodbath the ritual media interviews followed. The students, some of whom were extremely articulate posited a different narrative in addition to their pain, sorrow and anger. They started agitating for gun control and quickly caught the attention of the media who gave them all the time in the world to air their views. This is a new generation who more than any other have a platform to communicate - social media. They have thus plenty of experience at crystallizing their thoughts and ideas. While they were stating what had been said again and again, they were a new constituency as yet unheard from. In addition they have no inhibitions, no constituency to answer to or legislative seats to worry about. Like College Students they had no families or debts as yet that interfere with social awareness. So the twenty - four hour Cable News Networks had a new perspective with able spokespeople who were capturing the attention of their viewers. CNN organized a Town Hall and made it a key feature with a clock running for two days indicating the count down go the feature.
Protests were first at the immediate site of the bloody classrooms. They then moved across the State to towns like Fort Lauderdale and Tallahassee, the State capital, and then across the country. At Tallahassee the student observers got their first lesson of the real world where they witnessed, to their bewilderment, the Republican dominated legislature voting overwhelmingly against banning semi automatic weapons.The students have their well worn means of communication - social media - and it was reported that students would be walking out of classrooms throughout the whole country. The walk out is to last seventeen minutes in honor of the seventeen slain. In Florida the students left their classrooms to march to Parklands. One of the students claimed that this was a revolution. A typical posting on Facebook ran as follows:
“We are the students, we are the victims, we are the change, fight gun violence now. High School students across USA, the way to fight back is here. There has been too much complacency on the part of politicians when it comes to gun violence. The time to act is now!”
The attacks have become specifically directed at politicians as well. In Florida the two singled out are Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Scott. The students have vowed to expose all the politicians who rely on NRA money and have attacked President Trump. The latter was pressured to have a session where he will listen to the various constituencies in Parkland. That in itself is no mean feat - to have provoked enough of a flap to command the presence of the POTUS. They claim that their objective is to make their mass gun shooting tragedy the last and are planning a massive protest march in Washington on March 24 entitled “March For Our Lives”. For those who can’t make it to the capitol there are to be other marches in other parts of the country as well.
The student action has turned this tragedy into a cause celebre with wall to wall coverage provoking the Rush Limbaugh and Bill Rileys to claim that they are just Democratic Party stooges.
OUTCOME;
Whatever the outcome of the efforts of the students of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School in Parklands Florida they have added a new dimension to the gun control debate. They have caused a ripple effect resulting in one major Republican donor to threaten not fund any candidate that accepts NRA money. The planned walk out on March 14 has gained the support of the prestigious Women’s March pressure group.
How this will all end nobody knows. If history is anything to go by it will fizzle out. However the issue is not in isolation with what is going on in the country at the moment. As matters stand there are twenty - nine influential Republicans not standing for re election making a Democratic take over of the House that much more likely while the Republican WhiteHouse is under siege. (The fact that two - thirds of the electorate favor gun control and banning of semi - automatic guns and ninety - seven percent believe in comprehensive back ground checks for everyone is irrelevant as the Republican legislators have long ago stopped representing them). So who knows? Maybe the children will achieve what their parents couldn’t.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
Nothing has changed on the national scene. The Russian troll farms are weighing in heavily in favor of gun rights and smearing the students in the process. The conspiracy theorists are once again maintaining that Parklands is a hoax…..
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