Politicians beware: the kids are watching your response to Parkland—and signing up to vote

Something feels different. It’s not the hashtag “Never Again:” there’s a hash tag for every American mass shooting. It’s not the sickening statistics: we’ve all seen the graphs and charts demonstrating that of all developed nations, the United States is the only one, the only one, where people regularly go on shooting rampages, killing dozens at primary schools, concerts, cinemas, nightclubs, college campuses, post offices, churches, restaurants, community centers, you name it. It’s not the arguments for and against gun control—we’ve heard them before.

Maybe it’s the kids. Specifically, the kids of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School in Parkland, Florida, 100 of whom have arrived in the state capital to demand that their government do something about guns. They’ve been joined by a couple of thousand kids from the local high schools—the county Superintendent of Education’s giving any student attending the anti-gun rally an “excused absence,” much to the displeasure of some gun-loving parents—and a lot of adult activists hoping these young people can succeed where they have failed.

The kids are in the corridors of the Florida Senate, in the gallery of the House of Representatives, outside the governor’s office. They’re polite, but they’re not fooling around. The kids have let it be known—via national and international media—that they will work against any candidate, Democrat or Republican, who takes campaign money from the National Rifle Association.

Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Douglas, gave a speech calling bullshit (she used the more polite term “BS”) on “politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this” and barrel-polishers who say “a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun.”

So far, BS is all these kids have received from their government. As some of the Parkland students watched, weeping in frustration and horror, the Trumpist-controlled Florida House refused to even discuss banning assault weapons like the AR-15 Nikolas Cruz used to murder 17 at their school.

The representatives voted down the motion to debate on a strict party-line vote: all Republicans against, all Democrats for. The members did, however, find time to officially declare pornography “a health risk.”

Florida Governor Rick Scott, who boasts an “A+ Rating” from the NRA, blamed the FBI for not taking Nikolas Cruz’s erratic and threatening behavior seriously. He didn’t mention that the Florida Department of Children and Families, Scott’s own state agency, also knew about Cruz and also failed to do anything about him. Instead, Scott offered “thoughts and prayers,” mumbling about keeping guns away from crazy people.

Last February, Scott’s friend Donald Trump repealed an Obama-directive to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

When politicians aren’t prevaricating (or simply lying), they’re patronising these kids (“the Second Amendment is complicated”), hiding from them, and insulting them. An aide to Republican Representative Shawn Harrison accused Parkland students Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, who had just been interviewed on CNN, of being “actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen.” The aide got this from right-wing conspiracy theorists on the internet, others of whom also say Hogg’s some kind of FBI stooge and accuse Gonzalez of being “coached by Democrats.”

The Junior Class President of Douglas High School responded: “We are KIDS—not actors. We are KIDS that have grown up in Parkland all of our lives. We are KIDS who feared for our lives while someone shot up our school. We are KIDS working to prevent this from happening again. WE ARE KIDS.”

They are kids, yes, but many of them will be 18 in time for the November midterm elections. They are fired up, as Barack Obama used to say, and ready to go. They don’t want any more “thoughts and prayers;” they want candidates who take gun control seriously. And there are enough of them to make a real difference in Florida.

We’ve always been big on guns: you can buy just about any killing instrument you fancy here in “the Gunshine State.” Rick Scott, who’ll be in a close race for a United States Senate seat, will have to decide whether to accept the NRA’s invitation to address its annual convention in May.

Current Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whom late-night host Stephen Colbert recently compared to a potted plant (the plant would make a better elected official, according to Colbert), is catching hell over his all-guns-any-guns position. Rubio has taken more than $3m in campaign contributions from the NRA over the years. The kids are watching. And registering.

In the meantime, Florida’s Republican-controlled government (most of whom must stand for re-election this year) is under pressure to do something about school safety. So far, their top idea calls for—of course!—more guns. State Senator Dennis Baxley, who describes himself as a “Bible-believing Christian,” and author of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, the one that allows people to shoot anyone who threatens them, wants to arm teachers. You might call this self-dealing: Senator Baxley is an undertaker by trade.