March for life

The wave of anti-gun protests following February’s deadly Parkland school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead is unprecedented in US history. This is the first time that American citizens have come out to say: no more! The March for Our Lives protests are unique in that they were led by the young survivors of the mass shooting in February this year. It is the teenagers of the US that have stood up against the powerful National Rifle Association and its allied legislators. Away from the focus of the world, the US has turned into one of the world’s most militarised societies. In most US states, buying a gun is easier than buying alcohol. This is a scary situation that has led to dozens of incidences of a uniquely American crime: mass shooting. Nowhere else in the world are mass shootings an every month story. There is something about the tragic killing of 17 students within six minutes in Florida that has forced citizens to stand up. The biggest protest was seen in Washington where hundreds of thousands gathered at the National Mall to call for a ban for the sale of all assault weapons inside the US. The student protests are the biggest since the days of the anti-Vietnam War marches.

The question is whether change may finally come in a political system that is plagued by lobbyists. There were fears that the early protests would never scale up after US President Donald Trump tried to lead the traditional confusion of the narrative around mass shootings. ‘Arm teachers’, he told the survivors of the Florida shooting. This is the grossest logic that has come out from the US. ‘Buy more guns to stop gun violence’, says the NRA to the American public. The mass protests in the US are meant to put pressure to change things fundamentally in US gun laws. Grief has turned into anger and a desire for change, and the young are promising to vote out pro-NRA legislators in the US in the coming Congress elections. However, the reality of the US could be seen clearly in the counter-protests held in many cities around the US, where a number of people defended the right to carry arms. One would hope – probably naively – that it is the sane message of the hundreds of thousands of students that say ‘no to guns’ that will win out against those who want to keep America in the dark era of mass shootings.