It's been nineteen years since the Columbine school mass-shooting, and the pain is still palpable. For nineteen years, there's been a lot of talk, but no action, regarding mass-shootings, and one got the sense that people were feeling helpless in the face of pervasive gun culture and a powerful gun lobby. The pain, the shock, the loss still reverberate, but kids who weren't even born when the massacre took place have decided to push back with a series of school walkouts throughout the country. This walkout has received support from several VIPs.
The student movement against gun violence keeps gaining momentum, these teenagers who have never lived in a world in which mass school shootings were unknown are displaying a wisdom and a courage that previous cohorts of teenagers weren't able to muster on such a scale. Being organized, being righteous, being savvy, these kids are going to accomplish something transformative- I predict some amazing things from this generation and I am profoundly grateful.
I agree. I don't do nearly enough these days to fix societal problems, and it's great to see the much-derided next generaiotn standing up proudly to improve the world.
ReplyDeleteYES!
ReplyDeleteI remember being in my office as the news broke. Nobody was really thinking about mass/school shootings as a discrete thing, and the initial reports didn't even consider the possibility that the killers were students. It soon became very clear that it was, and though we are all somewhat inured to child killers and child victims now, it was utterly stunning that day.
And another YES!
The days of America's senseless 2nd amendment absolutism, where more and more guns are owned and carried in more and more places with less and less regulation are ending. These kids can see the idiocy, and they have less than zero fucks to give about your fucking 'rights'. They ARE coming for your guns - just as the previous generation ended the stupid and pointless proscription of same-sex marriage, and an earlier generation ended legalized Jim Crow laws.
I'm not a young man, but I desperately hope to live long enough to see these bloodthirsty idiots stripped of their precious guns...