The shots fired Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, reverberated across the country.
They echoed in classrooms from Miami to Milwaukee as students and educators dealt with fear and anger over at least the 170th school shooting since the killing of 13 at Columbine High School in 1999. In Parkland, 17 people died and 16 were injured by a shooter armed with an AR-15-style semi-automatic weapon.
The shots reverberated in legislative chambers and at the U.S. Capitol as well, as lawmakers debated whether to answer mass shootings by arming more people with weapons or restricting access to semi-automatic assault weapons.
They resonated in corporate offices too, where executives debated whether to continue dealing with the gun lobby and selling weapons to teenagers.
Weeks after the shooting, the echoes had not died down. And they likely will not fall silent, as young people have mobilized to build a movement that’s inspired their parents, teachers and principals — and that could provoke political change from school boards to the White House.
Students plan at least two major campaigns in March:
• On March 14, 17-minute walkouts from school.
• On March 24, a national march in Washington, D.C., and “sibling marches” around the world. Multiple marches are set to take place that day in Wisconsin and transportation is being arranged for students to travel from the state to Washington.
The March For Our Lives mission statement reads, in part: “Not one more. We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of a firing assault rifle to save the lives of students. We cannot allow one more family to wait for a call or text that never comes. Our schools are unsafe. Our children and teachers are dying. We must make it our top priority to save these lives.”
The campaign was created by students “who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar.”
“We are marching out of the classrooms to the campus and the Capitol,” said Milwaukee high school student Melinda Greski. “We demand safe schools. We demand an America where we can grow up.”
Remarkable accomplishments
How powerful can the movement become?
Consider how influential it was in its first couple of weeks.
Some of the nation’s large retailers of guns, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, discontinued the sale of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines and raised the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21.
On March 1, gun control activists launched a boycott of companies with ties to the National Rifle Association. Before the boycott hit, more than a dozen companies, including MetLife, Hertz and Delta Air Lines, stopped offering discounts or perks to NRA members and flatly rejected threats of retaliation from the organization.
“The NRA has turned our country into a war zone and Americans are done dying for you,” said Brandon Wolfe, a survivor of the June 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. “Our children are done being your sacrifices.”
Wolfe said two friends died at the gay nightclub and he endorsed a national campaign demanding candidates and elected officials return NRA contributions.
Many Democratic politicians backed the effort.
“The students of Florida are holding public officials accountable to save lives,” House Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at the California Democratic Convention. “Let us salute students for their courage and clarity; and let us salute them by pledging not to take any NRA money.”
Confronted by the outrage and eloquent student speakers, gun-friendly Republicans such as President Donald Trump, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida shifted their stances on gun control — but kept their NRA money.
Widespread support for student activists
Support for students is coming from gun control groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety, progressive institutions like Planned Parenthood, progressive lawmakers including state Reps. David Bowen and Jonathan Brostoff — who joined a Gun Violence Prevention panel in Milwaukee to tackle the issue — and especially school administrators, teachers and their unions.
In late February, as news outlets reported a school district in Wisconsin would punish students who participated in the Youth Empower walkout, Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Darienne B. Driver sent a letter to the “Dear MPS Family.”
“Our students have the constitutional right to free speech and peaceful assembly,” Driver wrote. “We support student-led civic engagement efforts and actions, as long as they are done in a safe and respectful manner. I stand with our students.”
To assist students in preparing for this month’s actions — some 200,000 students at more than 1,900 schools are expected to participate in the walkouts — the American Civil Liberties Union has provided online training and “Know Your Rights” guides.
For the marches, organizations are raising money to help students travel to Washington. Businesses are providing meeting spaces for organizers, eliminating fares and covering bills. Celebrities are writing checks for expenses. And longtime activists are schooling young leaders on voter registration efforts, because much of the responsibility for change rests with lawmakers.
Demanding gun legislation
March For Our Lives demands a “comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues.”
The march statement says, “No special interest group, no political agenda is more critical than timely passage of legislation to effectively address the gun violence issues that are rampant in our country.”
It’s before Congress and GOP-controlled legislatures that the #NeverAgain movement faces its largest hurdles to accomplishing that goal.
In Madison, during the last scheduled floor session for the Assembly, Democrats backed universal background checks and Republicans went against them.
“UBC should be the base policy where we can all agree and move forward together from,” Brostoff said.
State Sen. Chris Larson, on March 1, reported Democrats introduced seven measures for “common-sense gun reform” but the GOP leadership refused to hold hearings on the bills. Republicans did advance legislation to repeal the requirement to obtain a permit to carry a concealed gun and lower the age for conceal and carry to 18 and provide grants to schools for armed guards.
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., House Speaker Paul Ryan met with students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Afterward, Ryan called the students smart and passionate, thanked them for speaking with him and said, “We will continue to work to find common ground on solutions that can help prevent the kind of senseless violence these students endured.”
Yet as of March 7, Ryan, who received more from the gun lobby in 2016 than any other House member, had yet to allow a vote on any legislation to tighten gun laws to prevent mass shootings — not that there wasn’t plenty of legislation proposed.
Newtown Action Alliance said at least 56 gun control bills were introduced in the 115th Congress — legislation to ban semi-automatic rifles and pistols, prohibit possession of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices, authorize funding for the CDC to research gun violence prevention, require background checks for purchases at gun shows, require reporting on bulk purchases of ammunition, list those prohibited from buying a firearm in a national database and establish a seven-day waiting period to buy semi-automatic weapons, silencers and armor-piercing bullets.
Note: This story originally published in the Wisconsin Gazette.