Also, to add to your list, it may be that these schoolkids will outlive the majority of NRA types and realise time and momentum - both this ‘now’ and the long term - is on their side as their demographic increases and the old guys’ diminishes. But I am unfamiliar with NRA/gun-lover demographics in the USA so this is pure speculation (or may be wishful thinking).
ETA I forgot to say that lots of them will be voting soon, if they haven’t already.
All very good points. In addition to living under this shadow for most of their lives, they’ve also lived with the ability to organise via the Internet and social media all of their lives. For all that “move fast and break things” when practised by companies like Facebook has led to destructive results, teenagers are more inclined than ever to use those tactics and digital tools to spread their message quickly. They’re used to sharing their lives with the general public in a way that most people over age 40 aren’t.
That’s not to say that the forces opposing them aren’t using them, too. In addition to the whole social media push by the usual egregious scumbags trying to portray the survivors as “crisis actors” in thrall to the puppetmaster (((Soros))), the Russian botnets were turned around on a bloody dime to help spread the FUD and BS:
The kids are fighting back, though:
I know ‘class’ is a difficult subject to pin down, but these young adults that have got the ball rolling on pushing the NRA back into its hole are from well off, ‘upper middle class’ families, typically in Parkland $125K/household and up; their parents are well educated and focused on their children having a future; their parents have shown them how to plan and organize over the years; they have family emotional and financial backing for the phone bills, travel costs and all the minutia that makes up a campaign such as this; and the students understand creating rational arguments and presenting them to the public.
Notice that the NRA hasn’t said a damned word since this shooting and the student response. They are probably crapping themselves trying to strategize their way out of the storm coming at them and can’t see any way to respond to victims that are the perfect age to call both the NRA and their paid-for politicians to account.
It is refutable, or at least counter arguable. You want a change, you think the change will result in fewer mass shootings. The counter arguments can be “it won’t”, or “it will, but it results in loss of life elsewhere, like bird flying into a wind farm are visible, but all the birds that would die if we didn’t have the wind farm and made that energy with coal are scattered all over the forest and you won’t notice”.
Now depending on what the change is, I personally expect that you can get very different results.
We use to have a ban on “assault type weapons”, which seemed silly to me because it was based far more on what a weapon looked like then how it operated. However after it was repealed (or expired?) the mass shooting rate has gone up. So I would figure this would be good to reinstate, it has proven useful, and needing to pick a weapon based on what it does not how it looks will never interfere with self defense, and have only a minor impact on hunting. It seems like a great idea.
On the other hand deciding “no guns at all” runs a higher chance of actually getting people killed by abusave ex-boyfriends (or less commonly by ex-girlfriends). It runs a higher risk of people that would have been armed not being able to run off robbers, and getting killed (it also may actually have a chance of people NOT attempting to run off robbers, and getting themselves killed because they aren’t very good at it). I don’t have numbers here because it isn’t something we have done here, and doing it elsewhere brings in a lot of variables we don’t have. I will note that other countries have attempted this, and mass shootings have gone down, but I’m not sure anyone has done a great study of “violence no longer prevented by gun” in those countries. (if someone knows of such a study, definitely point me at it!). Note: I’m not saying this is a bad idea, just that it actually could be, and I have nothing usefully fact based here.
I think we want something like the assault ban, and more then that, but probably less then “no guns”…but that is getting away from the “yeah, actually people can refute this”. You may not like it. I may not like it. But it seems to be true.
The only thing the assault ban could have possibly done is introduce magazine limits. Nothing else. It was otherwise comically cosmetic.
Also, I’d like to add that the central point doesn’t need to be argued. Because these things are decided by debate but by votes. And as it stands, there simply isn’t near enough votes to repeal the second amendment.
What I never understand when listening to people going on about Doing Something is where they propose to conjure up the votes from.
Is it because it’s Boing-Boing, or does anyone else see echoes of Cory’s books “Little Brother” and “Homeland” in the amazingly quick organization of these people (I don’t want to use the term “kids” for them, they are too activist and too mature-acting - at least the ones I have hear speak on television and here in Tallahassee)
What was different about Columbine and Sandy Hook? Democratic presidents. If anything was changed it would have been fascist commies coming for your gun. Hopefully now, with the pro-gun party in power, sensible changes can be made without immediate hysterical dismissal by the right.
Loesch and Rubio didn’t know what hit them at that town hall. The crowd, the victim’s father (the strength that took – unimaginable), the students, the teacher, all of them coming at these two priests of Moloch from every angle.
Time’s up, NRA.
There wasn’t exactly a shortage of mass shootings under George W. Bush either. The Virginia Tech shooting left 33 people dead in 2007.
Crazy gun collectors exist in the US in every age group over the age of majority. It’s a small, vocal, questionably sane demographic, but it won’t be dying out any time soon. Our only option is to legislate the hoarders away. Or start controlling ammo supplies rather tightly. Can’t kill a crowd of people if you can’t afford the bullets.
@Carbonman: At this point, I don’t care how wealthy these kids’ parents are if the kids manage to get some traction toward ending the insanity that is America’s lack of gun regulations.
Or at least write laws that make it harder for even more people to take up gun hoarding. Even if we have to reduce the number of guns already out there via decades of attrition it’s better than keeping the current policies that continue to make the problem worse.
I’ll just go ahead and re-use this here.
art does that. It’s how to know its art.
Actually Libertarians generally believe that your right end where they begin to impinge on my rights.
Killing my kids definitely crosses that line.
I just read somewhere that the NRA has between 3 and 5 million members. Jesus. That’s barely statistically significant in a population numbering in the hundreds of millions…! How in the name of whoever did this unbelievably disproportionate amount of power come about?!
For the sake of comparison, there are around 30 million Republican party members and over 44 million Democratic party members. Holy snappin’ assholes.
There is only one Koch brother for every 162 Million Americans but they seem to have some pretty disproportionate power too.
These are the same people who sell the US military, and about 2/3rds of the rest of the world, guns - for 200 years or so.
I hear there’s profit in arms sales. Perhaps that’s where this money/power came from?
Vegas was mostly adults. As for the others, I think the theory in this thread is as good as any, so I will repost it:
Bahaha! Excellent point.
