Have we finally turned a corner on public tolerance for gun violence and the NRA?
Consider this Dishonor Roll:
- University of Texas, Austin, Texas (1966), 14 people shot dead by “Texas Tower Sniper” Charles Whitman, second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history; gunman killed
- California State University, Fullerton (1976), seven people shot dead, gunman surrendered, found not guilty by reason of insanity, currently incarcerated in mental hospital
- Cleveland Elementary School, Stockton, California (1989), five students shot dead by a gunman, who committed suicide
- Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado (1999), 12 students and a teacher shot dead by two gunmen, both suicides
- Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia (2007), 27 students and five professors shot dead by a gunman, another suicide
- Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut (2012), 20 first-graders and six school staff shot dead by a gunman, another suicide
- Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Oregon (2015) eight students and one teacher shot dead by a gunman, another suicide
Those are just the worst school shootings of the last 50 years. Now consider these:
- McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California (1984), which killed 22, including the gunman
- Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Kansas (1991), which killed 24, including the gunman, a suicide
- Century 16 Movie Theatre in Aurora, Colorado (2012), which killed 12
- Emanuel First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina (2015), which killed nine
- First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (2017), which killed 27, including the gunman, a suicide
- Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida (2016), which killed 50, including the gunman
- Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada (2017), which killed 59, including the gunman, a suicide, and injured 851—the single deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history
Not one of these outrages led to enacting any meaningful gun-control legislation, and in most cases the distractable media and timorous elected officials soon lost interest and moved on. Two shooting incidents in 1993, at a San Francisco law firm and on the Long Island Railroad—both ironically, committed only with handguns—led to a ten-year federal assault-rifle ban, which expired in 2004.The NRA and other gun proponents scoffed that it hadn’t made much difference—but in the following decade, both the number of mass shooting incidents and related deaths roughly tripled. Yet there was still no significant push to revive the legislation.
Then this happened, with an AR-15 assault rifle:
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida (Valentine’s Day, 2018), 15 students and two teachers shot dead (more than twice the number of mobsters killed by Al Capone’s hit men in the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre).
And now we suddenly find ourselves in what might be a genuine #NeverAgain moment, led not by our so-called “political leaders”—but by the kids themselves, those who survived, those who lost friends, and those whom the system most tragically, and unforgivably, is failing to protect.
Look for at least three major political actions coming soon:
- March 14, “Enough,” a coordinated 17-minute national school walkout (one minute to honor each Parkland victim)
- March 24, “March For Our Lives,” an anticipated 500,000-person march on Washington, D.C., along with dozens of other marches across the country
- April 20, a National High School Walkout on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine massacre,.
While school administrators would probably be within their legal rights to sanction participating students, imagine what a powerful message it would send if instead, they marched alongside them in a collective act of solidarity and self-defense.
Moreover, the message also seems to be getting through to the business community that promoting a pro-gun agenda is no longer good business. Dozens of corporations are ending their group discount programs for NRA members, which are nothing more than a direct financial subsidy to the NRA and its nihilistic legislative agenda, which opposes any and all gun-control efforts as “organized anarchy” and “European-style socialism” pushed by “elites…who hate individual freedom.”
I have long maintained that nothing will ever happen until NRA supporters are booted from office and NRA opponents are elected and re-elected. And few people are more cynical than I have been about the likelihood of elected officials ever standing up to the gun lobby.
But you know what? This time, it’s beginning to feel a little different. Maybe we’ve finally suffered enough killing. Maybe we’ve finally reached an inflection point. Maybe that long arc of the moral universe is finally bending toward justice.
And, just maybe, a change is gonna come.
