March for our lives: How children in the United States fight against weapons
March 24 in eight hundred points in the United States was an action "March for our lives" against the free sale of weapons - most people took to the streets in New York and Washington. These protests have become one of the most numerous youth speeches since the anti-Vietnam war in the 1970s. The march was organized by students from a school in Parkland, Fla., Where seventeen students died last month due to yet another mass shelling. We tell how the “March for Our Lives” united Republicans and Democrats and why it turned out to be the most meaningful protest in a long time.
School protest
Emma Gonzalez survived the shooting in Parkland. Speaking on stage in front of a huge audience in Washington, she was silent for six minutes and twenty seconds - just so much it took the school shooter to kill seventeen people and injure another fifteen. Eighteen-year-old Gonzalez became the face of the “March for Our Lives”; She is one of the participants in the #NeverAgain movement, which was organized by Parkland students. Conservative media have already called her "skinhead lesbian" and "shaved liar", and notice that during the shooting she was allegedly in another part of the school.
Among the speakers on the main stage there were almost no people older than eighteen. "March for our lives" is practically a child protest. “I learned to dodge bullets before I learned to read,” said seventeen-year-old Edna Chavez from the stage. Her brother Ricardo died in a mass shooting. During the speech, Chávez specifically switched to Spanish in order to emphasize his ethnic background. The nine-year-old granddaughter of Martin Luther King Yolanda and the eleven-year-old activist Naomi Walder appeared on the scene. “I’m here to talk about African-American girls whose stories don’t appear on the covers of newspapers. I’m here to pay attention to African-American women who have been the victims of the shooting,” said Walder. Minority rights were also claimed by eighteen-year-old Alex King and D'Engelo MacDade from Chicago. They went on stage with their mouths sealed, then they tore off the tape and told how they survived the shooting. The teenagers called for solving the problem not only with restrictions on the sale of weapons: “I came from a place where minorities are subject to violence and poverty. Today we are saying, that's enough!”
Vox counted over a thousand cases of mass shooting in two and a half years. A number of studies agree that the US remains the absolute leader in such incidents.
Samantha Fuentes, who survived the shooting at Parkland, also took the stage. Before that, she was already famous for not accepting the wishes of recovery of the current president: “No one made such a bad impression on me as Trump,” Fuentes told the press. During a performance in Washington, she vomited straight onto the stage, but the activist did not lose her head: "I just got sick of international television, and I feel great." She noted that the activists do not require a total ban on firearms, but want to find a compromise: "Forget about the color of your skin and political views. Let's just save each other!"
The United States has a long history of mass shootings in schools and public places: the beginning of such events dates back to 1840, then to 1966, when seventeen students died at the University of Texas because of the shooting. According to statistics collected by The Washington Post, since 1966 more than 1,077 people died in the United States due to mass shooting, 176 of whom were minors - this number did not include those who died as a result of a street shootout or domestic violence with weapons. According to their calculations, during this time there were 150 cases of mass executions (among them were only those incidents in which more than four people died).
However, statistics vary from study to study. For example, in another material of the same The Washington Post they write that since 2000 (since the notorious "Columbine" in 1999), schools and universities in America have only been shot 188 times. At the same time, some researchers propose to consider a mass execution of any situation in which the shooter does not kill, but attacks at least four people. Of course, this figure is more: for example, Vox counted over a thousand cases of mass shooting in two and a half years. In any case, a number of studies agree that the United States remains the absolute leader in such incidents.
Clear requirements
The “march for our lives” has already been announced as the most successful protest in recent years, comparing it with the “Women's March” (which allegedly could not clearly formulate the agenda). This is because activists have put forward specific requirements for the congress: a ban on the sale of assault weapons, a restriction on the storage of military supplies and a tightening of checks during each sale of a firearm. There were people not only with homemade posters, but also those who collected signatures for a petition to Congress.
To get weapons in the USA is really quite simple, and most importantly, quickly. For example, in Russia for this you need to undergo special training, get medical certificates, take exams and register weapons with the police - the process will take at least two weeks. In the US, it’s usually to buy a weapon in a store (or even a supermarket) you need to present a passport and fill out a special questionnaire, where a person indicates whether he has been tried before, whether he has psychological disorders or drug addiction. Checking the federal database takes a few minutes. Guns can be bought from the age of eighteen (earlier than strong alcohol), pistols - from the age of twenty-one.
At the same time, weapons legislation varies in each state - for example, in New York, you need to prove that you really need a firearm, and the state reserves the right to refuse to issue permission to buy weapons; but in Texas you don't need permission at all. Citizens have the right to carry an unloaded gun with them without additional papers, but a permit is already required on the pistol. A separate topic is the sale of weapons on the Internet and at fairs, where even the simplest reporting is often not required at all. At the end of his second term, Barack Obama issued a decree introducing checks, but this is not a law ratified by Congress, and some online stores and fairs continue to evade responsibility.
To get weapons in the USA is really quite simple, and most importantly, quickly. Guns can be bought from the age of eighteen (before strong alcohol), pistols - from the age of twenty-one
#NeverAgain has been actively opposing the National Rifle Association of the USA, or the NRA, a lobbyist who hasn’t allowed to tighten the firearms legislation for many years. "Today's protests are not spontaneous. Gun hunters in the face of billionaires and Hollywood elites manipulate and exploit children to destroy the constitution and our right to protect ourselves and loved ones," - written on the official NRA Facebook page. And Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that students from Parkland had to go to first aid courses in response to the execution of their classmates, "and not look for other people who would solve their problems." During the protests in Washington, President Donald Trump went to play golf, and US Vice President Michael Pence praised the film One Can Only Imagine on Twitter.
About 40% of Americans surveyed last year said they either own a firearm or live in a house with weapons. The United States for many years remained the world leader in the number of weapons per capita. The right to own it is almost sacred for many Americans - it is indicated in the second amendment to the constitution. Initially, it was about the fact that citizens have the right to it for the organization of uprisings and the protection of democracy in the event of tyrants coming to power. However, over time, the second amendment was interpreted differently, and the weapon from the means of the struggle for freedom has become a mandatory attribute of protecting your own home and private life. So, initiatives to limit the circulation of weapons began to be perceived as an encroachment on civil liberties.
My uterus doesn't shoot
All the protesters were united by one simple thought: children should not die. Therefore, people who did not normally find themselves on one side of the barricades took to the streets. Activist Shannon Watts posted a photo of her father and foster mother with placards against weapons and wrote: "Republicans from Illinois, earnest Catholics, pro-drivers in 2016 did not go to the polls." “I hunt deer every year to feed my family and just for fun. But I came here to protest against the extreme beliefs of the NRA, who use hunters to justify shooting in public places and schools. I don’t need an attack aircraft,” says Connor Roberts, who came to Washington from Southern Maryland.
Marsh was supported by celebrities who had not previously been seen in an active political position. Taylor Swift donated money, Kanye West (who, unlike Kim Kardashian, did not support Hillary Clinton in the elections in 2016) attended a rally in Washington with his family, Paul McCartney said that he went outside because of the free sale of weapons one of his best friends, hinting at John Lennon. #NeverAgain also received five hundred thousand dollars from Gucci and Oprah Winfrey. Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato performed on stage. Rapper Vic Mensa dedicated his track "We could be free" to the dead African Americans Stefan Clarke and Clement's Disintia - they were shot by police in Illinois.
Over time, weapons from the means of the struggle for freedom has become a mandatory attribute of the protection of privacy. So, initiatives to restrict his turnover began to be perceived as an encroachment on civil liberties.
Despite the fact that the main goal of the protest was very simple (but still difficult to achieve), the movement raised all relevant issues at once - this was clearly seen from slogans and banners. It was about class inequality (“In this country, it’s easier to get a weapon than education”), about minority rights (“If you’re more concerned about weapons than people, don’t tell me that all lives matter” - a reference to Black Lives Matter) , about abortions (“They wouldn't try to control my uterus, only if she could shoot”), about sexual abuse (“Wake up NRA - your time is up”) and about the hypocrisy of Donald Trump (“As long as you don’t talk about the victims of firearms weapons, do not convince me that you put America in the first place ").
Despite the fact that the organizers themselves did not put forward vivid political slogans, the march still acquired a protest tinge in a broad sense. The phrase "Vote them out!" (“Vote for them to leave”) met almost as often as calls to save children from massacres. Politico correspondents say that the Republicans present on the march were shocked by the roar of the crowd, when a short video with Donald Trump was shown on the screen. “This congress does not represent me”, “Grab them for the mid-term elections” (by analogy with “Grab them by the pussy”), “Prayers are not bulletproof”, “Fear: we are going to your seats!” - there were enough loud slogans in the crowd.
Interim elections (or simply congressional elections) will be held in the United States this year and should directly affect the solution of the weapon issue. Now, Western columnists continue to wonder whether the congress will meet #NeverAgain and what the political potential of the movement is in principle. And on the day of the rallies, one of the founders of the movement, David Hogg, stepped on the stage and asked: "Who among you will vote in midterm elections?" Prior to that, he hung on the microphone the price tag of one dollar and five cents - so, according to him, the current senator from Florida (it was there that was shot in February) Republican Marco Rubio assesses human life.
