The Scene staff
It’s been a month since the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., left 17 people dead and 14 wounded.
It’s time to stop dancing around the idea of stricter gun control and actually do something.
A recent Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans want stricter laws governing the sale of firearms, a record high since the survey began in 1993. Thousands of students participated in a national walkout last week.
But the National Rifle Association continues to oppose any kind of restrictions on who can purchase guns or what guns can be sold.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre accuses gun-control advocates of hating the Second Amendment and individual freedoms.
“Evil walks among us, and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids,” LaPierre said in a recent Associated Press story. “The whole idea from some of our opponents that armed security makes us less safe is completely ridiculous.”
Mr. LaPierre, we’re not challenging the Second Amendment. We’re not trying to take away your guns. We just want our nation to be safe and for kids to not have to worry about being shot in their classrooms.
We want stricter gun laws, period.
According to Politifact, Parkland is the third mass shooting that has taken place at or near schools in the United States this academic year.
The United States tops the list of gun deaths in the 23 highest-income nations worldwide, according to a 2016 study reported in the American Journal of Medicine. Americans are 10 times more likely to die from firearms than people in other developed countries.
It is absurd that we allow this to happen. Congress should pass legislation to help solve the problem, starting with a prohibition on the sale of military-style automatic weapons, such as AR-15s.
But both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans, making it an impossible feat. Many of them use fear tactics, telling their constituents that Democrats will take away their guns if elected.
That is far from the truth, but the NRA is lining these politicians’ pockets, so they’ll say anything.
The Washington Post recently published a report titled “Have your representatives in Congress received donations from the NRA?” The answer is “yes” for seven Republicans in Missouri, including U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt. That number explodes to around 290 nationwide, out of 535 total.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is on the list. At a CNN town-hall-style meeting after Parkland, he was repeatedly asked to stop taking NRA money by Cameron Kasky, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High student.
“There’s money on both sides of every issue in America,” Rubio responded. “I will always accept the help of anyone who agrees with my agenda.”
It’s clear that the NRA has a stronghold on Republican members of Congress, as well as Republican legislators in statehouses across the country.
I often ask myself, “What can I do to fix this?”
Deep down, I know that protesting in the streets won’t help. It might get media attention, raise awareness and pressure some congressmen to act. But that’s not enough.
Republicans won’t listen to anything we say. As long as they’re getting money from the NRA, they do not care.
The only thing we can do to fix the problem is vote Republicans out of Congress and put Democrats in the majority in the November election. It may be a longshot, but it’s all we’ve got.
After the Parkland shooting, students and other Americans are becoming more politically engaged on the gun-control issue. We need to keep that energy going and take it to the polls.
You can be part of this national movement. Vote in a candidate who will keep guns at bay. Vote in a candidate who will keep children safe. If we don’t do something, the problem will only get worse with time.