Parkland Students and The Never Again Msd Movement

On the 14th of February 2018, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 students in his old High School. This was one of many mass shootings in the USA that have occurred over the past decades and is among the USA’s ten deadliest shootings in the past 50 years. (Ahmed, 2018) After shootings that happened before, people would talk about gun violence and stricter laws against it for a short period, and would then continue their lives. However, this time people are standing up against gun violence. A group of the survivors of the Parkland shooting has started a campaign under the name “Never Again MSD”, which aims to change laws on gun control.

The most prominent members and initiators of this movement, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, Emma González and Alex Wind, were included on this years’ TIME 100 Most Influential People. The students knew, directly after the shooting, that this could have been prevented if only there were better gun control laws. They agreed that it was no time for “thoughts and prayers”, but instead it was time for a change. One of the first actions by these students was a speech by Emma González at a gun control rally just days after the shooting, where she addressed several aspects of the issue. The students all agree that gun violence in the USA should come to a halt. They want to make changes to legislation to achieve this. Gonzáles said in her speech: “Since the time of the Founding Fathers and since they added the Second Amendment to the Constitution, our guns have developed at a rate that leaves me dizzy. The guns have changed but our laws have not. ” (CNN, 2018a) All these students believe it is too easy to acquire firearms in the USA.

A universal background check is only required when buying a firearm from a licenced dealer, but even the checks that are in place are far from watertight. The buyer has to fill out a form with a set of questions asking about a history of drug abuse and crime, but someone could easily lie on this form. Because of this, the FBI is contacted to search through the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) records, but even this check has flaws. States are not required to submit mental health and crime records into the NICS. Also, the background check has to be completed in under 72 hours. If this does not happen, the buyer can purchase the firearm anyway. All these flaws make up for a poor background check system that costs lives. The students want to change the law so that background checks are always mandatory, and that they are a lot less flawed. They want better background checks to prevent dangerous people from owning lethal weapons. For some arms, the students even want a ban. An example of this is an accessory called a bump stock, which makes a semi-automatic rifle (one which does not need reloading for every shot, but needs someone to pull the trigger for every shot) function as a fully automatic rifle (one which can be fired multiple times by holding down the trigger).

In Florida a bill that bans these bump stocks has already been signed (FindLaw, 2018), but the students won’t stop there. The group of student activists is calling out to people to vote for politicians who support gun control. They have also organised events like the March For Our Lives, which was an event across the USA where people held marches in different cities to protest against the current laws. The students have a lot of power and influence because people sympathise with them and because they appeal very well to the youth. Because of the fact that they experienced a school shooting first hand, people sympathise with them, and because they are just teenagers they appeal very well to other people their age. This makes for a situation where people are likely to listen to what you have to say, which gave their movement a lot of power in its early stages. After the media had stopped covering the events related to the shooting, the movement kept its power because of support by famous or important people, like Barack Obama, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, George Clooney, Paul McCartney and many more, who talked about the movement in the media or attended the March For Our Lives. All these people have a big influence, mainly because of their immense social media following. This created more awareness for the issue, and also made more people join the Never Again MSD movement itself.

Of all the followers of the movement, a lot can vote for politicians to support gun control laws. The teenagers who cannot vote yet, who make up a big portion of the movement, can convince adults around them to vote for these people, and they can vote themselves when they grow up. In this way the Parkland students have a very big influence on a lot of people, which translates to a significant amount of political power. Even though there are a lot of people who support the Never Again MSD movement, there are also many people and organisations that are against gun control, for example Laura Ingraham, a FOX News host, and Alex Jones, host of his own radio show “The Alex Jones Show”. There are also institutions that do not support the aims of the Never Again MSD movement, like the National Rifle Organisation, a big non-governmental organisation that supports gun dealers and gun ownership.

These people and organisations argue that it’s not a gun problem, but a mental health problem, and that people need guns to protect themselves. The students have rejected these claims in powerful ways, like Emma Gonzáles did in her speech: “They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS [(Bullshit)]. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. ” (CNN, 2018a) By rejecting the opposition’s claims in this powerful way, her speech became very memorable, giving her movement more power. Laura Ingraham even wrote a tweet attacking David Hogg, one of the students, personally. She wrote: “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4. 1 GPA. . . totally predictable given acceptance rates. )” (Ingraham, 2018). Hogg was not put down by it, but instead tweeted a call for a boycott of Ingraham’s show, after which many advertisers pulled their advertisements from her show. Ingraham wrote an apologising tweet, but Hogg said in an interview on CNN that he did not accept her apology. He also said about the original tweet that he thinks it is wrong to try to distract people from the real issue. (CNN, 2018b)Some people have even started conspiracy theories, mainly about David Hogg, claiming he wasn’t even present at the shooting, or saying he is an actor, but when he gets asked about this, he often discards the claims, and moves on to talk about the issue of gun violence. He does not let himself get caught up or distracted by the claims of the opposition. All these instances show that these students are great debaters and public speakers, which helps them maintain their movement’s power, even though many people have tried to stand in their way.

All in all, this group of students, and the movement they have created, have a lot of influence and power. This comes from the fact that they started their movement at the right time, just after the shooting at their school, and used that moment to stand up against gun violence. That gave their movement power, and their strong debating and public speaking skills, kept it going. The amount of endorsements by popular figures also helped to bring their message to a wider audience. Now, just before the Midterm Elections, their influence translates to people voting for politicians who care about gun control. In this way, the Never Again MSD movement could actually accomplish something big, like better and stricter universal background checks, but we will just have to wait and see.