In A Post-Parkland America, Teens Talk About Gun Culture

February 14, 2019 8:20 AM

NPR spent nearly a year talking to high school students about their attitudes about guns. Here is their reporting in a 20 minute video -- Senior Spring: How Teens Feel About Guns In America.
posted by hippybear (18 comments total)

Charlie Pierce: The Parkland Students Breathed Life Into the Battle Against Gun Death (emphasis in original)

I am about a third of the way through Dave Cullen's new book about the Parkland shooting and its aftermath. Cullen's masterful work on the Columbine massacre seems now to be a kind of prelude to the Parkland story. Columbine came to a dead end in the country's politics; it was surpassed by other, worse shootings and it became weaponized by the country's gun-fondling constituencies to help put more guns in the hands of more people, just as Sandy Hook was used later. But, as Cullen points out, Parkland is different. To use a graceless metaphor, the survivors at Parkland shot back.

David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, and their classmates fought against the anesthetic of historical amnesia and, so far, they've beaten it to the ground. They have stood in against the anesthetic balm of thoughts-and-prayers. They have taken boundless ridicule about being so young and earnest and properly enraged. They have organized a network of survivors and a fellowship of grieving parents and siblings. And they have changed the conversation in this country by laying the bleeding bodies of their classmates across the nation's heart.

In the past year, they have organized a massive march in Washington, as well as substantial other marches in other places. They have lobbied and they have spoken and they have taken their case to every media platform that exists. Their cause was a factor in flipping both the House of Representatives and several gubernatorial races in the 2018 midterm elections. (Even Rick Scott, then the governor of Florida and now its junior senator, signed into law some watery gun-control laws that were nonetheless enough for the NRA to reduce his rating from and A to a D.) For once, the relative passion and enthusiasm on that issue was a fair fight. The Parkland students did that.

One of the longtime avatars of this shebeen is William Lloyd Garrison, the uncompromising voice of abolitionist Boston. In the first edition of The Liberator, his anti-slavery newspaper, Garrison famously declared his intentions, which I took as my own when we opened the shebeen in 2011:

I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.

A year ago, some students who had survived bloody mayhem stepped into that same proud tradition. God bless them for being Americans.

posted by zombieflanders at 8:51 AM on February 14, 2019 [21 favorites]

The bad -- Poll: A Year After Parkland, Urgency For New Gun Restrictions Declines (NPR, Feb. 14, 2019)

One year after the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the urgency for new gun restrictions has declined, but roughly half the country is concerned a mass shooting could happen at a school in their community, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.

The good -- NRA Facing Most Formidable Opposition Yet, A Year After Parkland

For the National Rifle Association, the year since the Parkland shooting has led to a changing — and less favorable — political landscape.

Democrats control the House of Representatives, public opinion polling shows (Politifact) a majority of Americans support expanded background checks, and the NRA's political spending is down (McClatchy DC).

In addition to growing grass-roots anti-NRA groups and efforts to go after the NRA's funding, the 2018 elections put more Dems in power:

For decades, the National Rifle Association has been a driving political force — its large, grassroots membership makes it a formidable organization. In an interview with NPR, its spokesperson put its membership between 5 million and 6 million — its highest tally ever.

"We have more dues-paying members than any other grassroots organization in the world," Baker boasted.

But last week, the House Judiciary Committee held the first hearing on gun violence in eight years (NPR), a reflection of the new Democratic House majority.

posted by filthy light thief at 8:59 AM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

I think people often forget that there used to be lead in paint until the late 70s, and gasoline until the early 90s. If you're flying on old enough metal, there are still spots in the armrests where the ashtrays used to be; that's how routine smoking in airplanes used to be.

Things can still change fast, and for the better.
posted by mhoye at 9:00 AM on February 14, 2019 [21 favorites]

The "first hearing on gun violence in eight years". That's sobering.
posted by vverse23 at 9:10 AM on February 14, 2019 [8 favorites]

Sam Sanders' podcast It's Been A Minute had a really excellent episode featuring interviews with some high schoolers in Oakland about their experience with gun violence.
posted by ChuraChura at 9:17 AM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Our lack of movement on this issue is a great source of collective shame!
posted by The Whelk at 9:36 AM on February 14, 2019 [9 favorites]

Uh thank you, Chairman Whelk :)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 9:50 AM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]

I live in FL and routinely work with high school students. An awful lot of them write about how disappointed they are that, in one young woman's words: "older people love guns more than their own children."
posted by Kitty Stardust at 9:54 AM on February 14, 2019 [22 favorites]

How the Parkland Shooting Changed My Life Sarah Lerner

I wasn’t in Building 12. I didn’t see anyone get shot. I never saw the shooter. I didn’t think of myself as a survivor. When I said that to my husband, he told me that I absolutely was. I was on campus that day. I heard the shots when I got outside after the fire alarm went off. I returned to my classroom, where I kept 15 students safe in my classroom for two and a half to three hours, until the SWAT team entered my room. I might not have seen anything, but I was there and didn’t know whether I’d be next.

I remember the day vividly.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:05 AM on February 14, 2019 [6 favorites]

I honestly can't tell if it's criminal or genius the degree to which the pro-gun kids that NPR focuses on have completely cliched, unconsidered, and often outright disproven-by-facts reasons why they think guns are great. It's like, on the one side you have people trying to combat the soon-to-be-intergenerational trauma of gun violence and school lockdowns, and on the other side you have people whose rationales for why it's not such a big deal are:

- It's our heritage
- 2ND AMENDMENT WARRIOR, WE CAN RISE UP AGAINST THE GUB'MINT
- Well if shit falls apart because of a natural disaster, I want to be armed so I can shoot people
- If you've never experienced the "good" parts of gun culture you shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion on it

I mean, I'd love to believe they did it on purpose but I feel quite sadly that they did not, and that they aren't really reflecting so much on how ridiculous these kids are.
posted by tocts at 10:20 AM on February 14, 2019 [5 favorites]

Yeah, the “it’s beautiful in the woods in the morning, that’s where I feel closest to god, therefore guns” part was a bit much.
posted by mhoye at 11:18 AM on February 14, 2019

I've been volunteering with the high school FIRST robotics team. When I was in high school, my greatest worries were "Am I going to pass the final? How am I going to finish that paper and still get hours at work?" The number of kids that have told me their big source of stress and worry is "Am I going to be murdered while at school?" is just... it's heartbreaking. This is not something kids should have to worry about at school, or anywhere else, ever. It is disgusting that this is even a thing.
posted by xedrik at 11:49 AM on February 14, 2019 [7 favorites]

Yes, that really struck me too. The only kid who says he "likes" guns but has mixed feelings about them is the kid who lives in Chicago and sees gun violence near daily. All the solidly pro-gun kids are like cardboard cutouts, and I just can't believe that there were no shotgun toting country kids with more nuanced ideas. Hell, there's the one kid from San Antonio, which yes, is a town with a very strong military culture (you land in the airport and hear announcements from service men and women welcoming you) but it's also a very diverse and comparatively liberal town with a mix of cultures and expectations. But the kid in this piece is nearly cartoonish in his simplicity, his apparent desire to "serve", the way he's filmed and framed.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely want to take people's guns away. But I also grew up in San Antonio and I know that there are a lot of pro-gun people with much more nuanced thoughts and experiences about the matter, whose opinions have shifted with the increased awareness of school shootings. I would love it if it were really as obvious as the NPR piece apparently makes it out to be. But by simplifying it in that way, it almost takes away the complexity of the hard work the gun control kids are actually doing, to shift the culture and the discussion as they have.
posted by Mizu at 12:01 PM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

The NRA is a Russian Asset, aided and abetted by the conservative right-wing radio grifters and Fox News.

Fuck them all.

Take the guns away.
posted by Windopaene at 12:37 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

"So my kids school had a genuine lock-down today... I say to her, why did you write that on your arm? She says, 'in case the bad guy got to us and I got killed, you and daddy would know that I love you,' and she started to cry." -Shelley Harrison Reed
posted by zombieflanders at 12:39 PM on February 14, 2019 [11 favorites]

There’s now an active shooter st the Netflix HQ apparently? So happy one year anniversary of nothing absolutely nothing
posted by The Whelk at 5:03 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]

Kyrah Simon: You May Not See Me On TV, But Parkland Is My Story, Too.
posted by homunculus at 11:11 PM on February 18, 2019

Since Parkland: 12 months, 1,200 American kids killed by guns, 1,200 stories about the lives they led, reported by teen journalists across the country
posted by homunculus at 11:13 PM on February 18, 2019 [1 favorite]