The reaction was intense. Students organized a rally at the state Capitol, reached out to the news media and scraped together the money to make a trip to Washington to lobby Congress.
They even got a meeting with the president.
“They have come to Washington to hold our feet to the fire and make their voices heard. They are plainly impatient with the lack of action on the important legislation before Congress,” the president said. “For the past three months, the gun lobby has been calling the shots on Capitol Hill. Now itap time for Congress to listen to the lobbyists who truly matter.”
The year was 1999. The president was Bill Clinton. The slaughter was Columbine.
The bloodbath on Feb. 14, 2018, is now known as “Parkland.” It occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and it was, appallingly, the .
This time, unlike the massacre at Columbine High School, which occurred during the 10-year on so-called assault rifles, the teenage shooter was able to walk into a gun shop and buy a semi-automatic weapon, making his efforts both quicker and deadlier.
I realize that the student movement to demand gun control after Columbine was a disappointment.
The students were crushed on so many fronts. The death toll since provides all the evidence we need of that. And every time another massacre happens, the gun industry rallies its zombie following to buy more guns, more ammo, more politicians.
But things feel different now, dramatically so.
The young people from Parkland are among thousands of students and teachers around the country who have experienced school shootings firsthand. They are among millions of school children and teachers who regularly cower in supply closets and locked classrooms for active shooter drills.
With the persistent and outrageous government inaction, their numbers keep growing.
The students and teachers share the same nightmare: that they have been abandoned; that nobody cares; that in the calculus of guns vs. children, they are expendable. They are screaming, and no one will listen.
So they stand on the Capitol steps and chant “No more deaths,” “Gun control now” and “Enough.”
For this they are subjected to on the right, ridiculing them for their appearance and their ethnicity, and accusing them falsely of being paid actors.
Who needs Russian saboteurs when we have our very own homegrown political terrorists working to deny these kids the right to petition their representatives.
We all know who the real paid actors are: Cory Gardner, Ken Buck, Scott Tipton, Mike Coffman and all the other elected officials on the payroll of the National Rifle Association who cash the checks in exchange for continuing to smother the conversation.
While the NRA’s purchasing power in Congress is even greater than it was 19 years ago, the political climate has changed.
show the highest rate of support for gun control ever.
Support for universal background checks is at 97 percent; 67 percent of respondents want a ban on semi-automatic weapons; 83 percent support mandatory waiting periods for all gun purchases; and 75 percent say Congress needs to act to reduce gun violence.
If there ever were any patience with our leaders about their failure to take action, itap gone.
Furthermore, this generation of high school leaders has a tool the kids at Columbine didn’t have: social media.
They can connect with the survivors of Columbine, Red Lake, Roseburg, Sandy Hook, Houston, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Roswell, Seattle, Milwaukee, Portland, Detroit, Los Angeles and all the other school shootings around the country. They can record the arrogant, belittling responses they get from their representatives in state capitols and in Washington and immediately hit “share.”
They can speak of grief, fear and anger in a language that resonates deeply with their peers because so many of them have had to lie on the floor with their hearts pounding and wait for a cop or a teacher to tell them itap over, you can stop crying now, you’re alive.
Imagine how different things might be if our leaders had listened to the students from Columbine 19 years ago, looked around the world to learn how civilized countries protect their children and done something.
And for all those NRA zombies who say there’s nothing to be done, I suggest they read the message on the T-shirts worn by the Parkland students at the state Capitol in Florida on Wednesday.
It said, “”
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant and a regular columnist for The Denver Post.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.
