Any movement to transform America’s gun politics requires neutralizing the National Rifle Association and its power over the Republican Party. It means attacking a corrupt system of legalized bribery in which politicians ignore public opinion and take the NRA’s blood money and do its bidding.
The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, may well become the catalyst that will undermine the power of the gun lobby in America. There is every indication that this mass shooting, which left seventeen people dead, is different from others before it, including the seventeen other school shootings that preceded it this year. Students have become political, and are organizing through their anger, grief, and trauma.
Typically, after each gun-related massacre, elected officials—particularly conservative lawmakers who have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the NRA—offer “thoughts and prayers” to the victims and their families. They churn out empty platitudes but take no action. Now is not the time to discuss gun control, they insist. We should not politicize the issue, they say, as they support legislation to expand gun access.
This time around, that seems less likely to occur.
“If all our government and President can do is send ‘thoughts and prayers,’ then it’s time for victims to be the change that we need to see,” said massacre survivor Emma Gonzalez at a weekend rally after the shooting.
Gonzalez is one of five students who formed “Never Again MSD” on social media. The group is organizing a March for Our Lives against gun and school violence on March 24, with protests and rallies across the country. On April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine school massacre, high-school students and teachers across the nation will stage a school walkout to protest Congressional inaction on gun laws. Already, students are staging die-in and lie-in actions in front of the White House and throughout the nation.
Data on gun violence and fatalities demonstrates the scope of the problem. The United States has 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but nearly half of the world’s civilian-owned firearms—270 million guns. It averages one mass shooting per day.
With more than 33,000 gun fatalities annually in America, gun violence is a uniquely American crisis. States with more restrictive gun laws have fewer gun-related deaths, while states with more firearm ownership have more gun-related deaths, including suicides and deaths of on-duty police officers.
Since Columbine, 150,000 U.S. students have experienced a school shooting, and the impact of guns on American children is worse than previously realized. With more than 7,000 children in the United States shot each year, firearms are the third leading cause of death for children here. Astoundingly, 91 percent of children killed by guns in high-income countries worldwide live in the United States.
The NRA has become an extremist organization, using strident language and speaking out on matters that go beyond gun ownership. The group and its spokespeople have attacked Black Lives Matter activists and incited violence against the political left and anti-Trump protesters.
Donald Trump, who in recent days has said he wants to arm teachers, received $31 million in help from the NRA on the 2016 election. Gun-right lobbying groups gave $5.9 million to Republican candidates for Congress that year, and only $106,000 to Democrats. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, more than half of the members of the House of Representatives received campaign donations from interests representing gun rights and manufacturers. Fifty U.S. Senators received $27 million to vote against background checks and other gun-control measures that enjoy majority public support.
Gun-right lobbying groups gave $5.9 million to Republican candidates for Congress in 2016 and only $106,000 to Democrats.
The four-student marksmanship team in which Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz participated in school received a $10,827 NRA grant for JROTC school programs promoting marksmanship skills for young people. Cruz was reportedly obsessed with violence and guns, hated “jews, ni**ers, immigrants,” gays and white women in interracial relationships. And he wanted to kill Mexicans, put black people back in chains and cut their necks.
The AR-15—the semiautomatic civilian equivalent of the M-16 fully-automatic rifle used by the U.S. military to kill enemy forces—is the weapon of choice in the deadliest mass shootings. Following the recent shooting, stocks rose for the manufacturer of the AR-15, which is easier to purchase than a handgun in Florida.
Under Florida’s lax gun laws, no permit is required to purchase a weapon. Although the state has a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases, this is not the case for the AR-15. Further, federal law requires buyers to be at least twenty-one to purchase handguns, but only eighteen for semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s.
Florida Governor Rick Scott, who has an A+ rating from the NRA and is considering a U.S. Senate run, noted proudly in 2014 that he had signed “more pro-gun bills into law—in one term—than any other governor in Florida history.” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, has received more than $3.3 million from the NRA over the course of his career, and Florida’s congressional delegation has received $129,050 since 1998.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who announced that the state will pay for funeral expenses and counseling services for the victims, received an A rating from the NRA. Bondi supported an effort to overturn a federal law prohibiting those between eighteen and twenty years old from purchasing handguns and ammunition from licensed firearms dealers.
For twenty years, the NRA has blocked federal funding for research on gun violence. Despite claims that mental illness is a leading cause of gun violence, less than 5 percent of people who commit shootings have a diagnosable mental illness. It is crucial that we also examine anger disorders, America’s gun culture and the role of violence in society, toxic masculinity, and the link between gun violence and domestic violence.
It is crucial that we examine anger disorders, America’s gun culture and the role of violence in society, toxic masculinity, and the link between gun violence and domestic violence.
Adults accuse millennials of standing for nothing beyond eating laundry detergent pods. Yet, young people in Florida and elsewhere—articulate and thoughtful, media savvy and politically astute—are taking action against policies that are killing them in the classroom. They are demanding accountability from an older generation of lawmakers that never consulted students when writing the laws that impact them, from college loans to gun violence in schools.
If young people have started a revolution, they will succeed only if the elected officials who receive NRA contributions are replaced. That is the only way the public policy landscape on these weapons of war will change.
David A. Love is a writer and commentator based in Philadelphia.