Over A Year After the Parkland Shooting, Has Anything Really Changed?
Over a year ago, a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida opened fire on the student body. Ten minutes later, the damage was done. Seventeen people died, and seventeen were wounded. Thousands of students were forever affected by what they saw that day. But instead of allowing that terrible moment to haunt and define the rest of their lives, they decided to use it as motivation.
The population of Stoneman Douglas, as well as students across the country, got right to work. Within a week of the shooting there were walkouts begging government officials to take action. The Stoneman Douglas students headed to Florida's capital, Tallahassee, to face lawmakers head on. And then, of course, there was the March for Our Lives, an incredible event held in Washington D.C. a little over a month after the shooting. Organized by the survivors themselves, high schoolers put their basketball practices and midterm exams on hold to honor the lives of their 17 peers and teachers and prevent another massacre.
There were months of walkouts, meetings with politicians, acts of solidarity. Celebrities joined in, bolstering the cause, urging congress to act, to do something to keep a massacre of this magnitude from occurring yet again.
But what did this achieve? In March, Florida passed their first succesful gun reform measure in over 20 years. The bill raised the minimum age of all gun purchases from 18 o 21, though federal age for buying shotguns and rifles remains at 18. The bill also increased the waiting period for gun buyers and banned bump stocks, which can allow rifles to fire faster and were used in the Las Vegas shooting to kill 58 people in 2017.
Unfortunately, that bill also allowed the arming of school employees, which was not requested by the Stoneman Douglas survivors, but was highly desired by the National Rifle Association. Noticeably missing from the bill was ban on assault rifles (one of the biggest demands from the students), high capacity magazines, and strengthened background checks, leaving many to wonder: Is this bill a victory for the survivors, or the pro-gun NRA?
It's a step, and since Florida passed the legislation, 14 other states followed suit, with more expected to come in 2019. In fact, 76 gun reform laws were passed in the last year.
Despite that, since the fateful day Parkland, there have been almost 350 mass shooting in America. So, where is the disconnect? It seems to be on the national level, where gun laws have proven to be harder to pass, leaving a national ban on bump stocks to be the only victory this past year.
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We have a long way to go. Seventy-five percent of high school students still say that mass shootings are a primary concern for them, and why shouldn't they be? With almost one mass shooting a day in the US, how many is it going to take before some real changes are made? Following the Parkland shooting, when the students really stood up and took action, I thought, "This is it. These teens are finally going to make a change. America is listening." And while they made huge strides, and they are priming the next generation of voters, there is still so much work to be done. We cannot wait for these students to get their own seats in the government before actual changes are made. There will be too many lives lost at that point, there are already way too many lives lost.
One year after the Stoneman Douglas shooting and what do we have to say for it? Students still walk into school everyday, nervous and thinking, "Could today be the day I join the other thousands of students who have witnessed a mass shooting on their campus?" Until this thought is eradicated from the minds of teens across the country, until they can go back to enjoying lunch with friends and stressing over AP exams, we will not be succesful in fixing our country.
Carolyn Twersky is the Assistant Editor at Seventeen.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram!
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