Gun Control in The US PDF

# Gun control in the US ## March For Our Lives: How long will the movement last? After the marches: America's children are the last hope to save the country. Last Saturday, over a million Americans took to the streets, including more than half a million young people for the first time. They demo...

# Gun control in the US ## March For Our Lives: How long will the movement last? After the marches: America's children are the last hope to save the country. Last Saturday, over a million Americans took to the streets, including more than half a million young people for the first time. They demonstrated in Washington, Parkland, New York, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Boston, Boise, Miami, Denver, Reno, San Jose, Phoenix, Portland, Orlando, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Providence, Albuquerque, and in 800 other cities. Because the America where these young people want to grow up and live, must, in their eyes, do one thing above all, immediately: disarm. While Donald Trump assembled his new cabinet of war, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, John Bolton as National Security Advisor, Emma, David, Delaney, Cameron, and their school friends from Parkland, Florida, organized “The March For Our Lives". They are 16, 17, 18 years old, and they refuse to accept mass shootings like the one on February 14 at their school as a natural disaster, against which there’s nothing further to do than arm oneself. Seventeen students and teachers were killed in the attack, and since then the weapons lobby National Rifle Association (NRA) and Donald Trump himself have been pushing for even more weapons, they want to equip teachers with pistols and rifles. The name that has become ingrained for these protesting students and their peers is Generation Z. They call themselves the generation of mass shootings. They were born after 1995, and they know no America that is not waging war on terror somewhere. They have no memory of the attacks of September 11, 2001, but they know about Guantánamo, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. They have witnessed the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they have seen how weapons that America uses in these wars have led to a hundredfold murder in their schools in civilian life. Just days before the demonstrations, two teenagers were killed again by the weapon of a classmate. For this generation, the third most common cause of death in the United States is being killed by a weapon (after car accidents and suicide). In a widely quoted essay in the magazine Teen Vogue, published shortly before the rallies on Saturday, 18-year-old Emma González, the best-known face of the student protest, asked as simply as it was disarming how to imagine arming teachers: Do they have to buy their own weapons, or will schools have weapons depots? How do you prevent students from breaking in? Do teachers have to carry their weapons during lessons, or will they be stored in a safe place in the classroom? Should they be locked away? How does the teacher get to the weapon when an attacker enters the classroom? Could a student take the weapon from the teacher if he’s standing next to him? At least the police in Washington followed the logic presented by Emma González on Saturday, that more weapons do not mean more security. There were signs along the route indicating that weapons were not permitted in this area. # Gun control in the US It is not permitted to be in public with a weapon - not even for people who are actually allowed to carry them. ## Parallel to the anti-war and anti-Vietnam generation? Aurora, Newtown, Las Vegas - after every rampage, there was a public outcry against the madness of the weapons and calls for stricter laws. Almost exactly a year ago, after Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than a million people demonstrated at the “Women’s March on Washington”, again all over America - then mainly against violence against women and misogyny. But how sustainable were these mass protests, what have they achieved? Didn’t the country usually quickly return to its daily routine after the public outcry? The NRA, in any case, was not intimidated and still managed to stop initiatives for genuinely stricter gun laws in their tracks. But is it naive to hope that it could be different this time? That the students can achieve what generations before them could not achieve? The young people of Generation Parkland are the new anti-war demonstrators, but they don’t need to wait for a change in public opinion; the vast majority has long been in favor of stricter gun laws: 91 percent of Americans support stricter general inspections. 71 percent are in favor of raising the minimum age for gun purchases from 18 to 21 years. 60 percent want to ban the sale of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Incidentally, the survey was conducted by an institution which is rather unlikely to sugarcoat American opinion on this matter. The conservative TV channel Fox News conducted it after the Parkland attack. This shift in opinion did not happen overnight. It took time and is the result of many horrific attacks and the growing indignation at the inaction of politics. The protest has already been voiced by the parents of the 20 young children who were murdered in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Several organizations have been founded that advocate for stricter gun control. Among their supporters are the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, and the former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was the victim of an attack in January 2011. Civility plus moral integrity. That's also why the student protest last weekend was so well received, because Americans are largely in favor of it. It’s this civility and moral integrity that also give the internally deeply wounded students from Parkland their power. Samantha Fuentes is one of them. The shooter shot her in both legs. On stage in front of the Capitol in Washington, she recited a poem about those dreadful minutes. It was more like an angry chant. After the first stanza, she choked, gagged, doubled over, and had to go behind the podium. Then she stood up again, grabbed the microphone and said: “Man, I just threw up in front of the international media - and it felt good!” Then she read her verses to the end. Emma González recited a poem of sorts listing the names of the murdered students and teachers from Parkland - and fell silent for six minutes and 20 seconds. That’s how long the attacker took to shoot her friends. In Washington and in many other places, Generation Parkland is shaking the foundations of a very questionable freedom right; that freedom which has become a threat to the lives of young people. # Gun control in the US ## The foundation of a very questionable right to freedom America is experiencing an astonishing change these days. In a time of growing division and political feuds, many Americans are finding common ground, particularly on the highly emotional issue of gun ownership. Until November, the Republicans who control Congress will have the opportunity to decide whether to support the moderate tightening of gun laws that the majority of Americans want, or whether to continue ignoring this will. Parliamentary elections will be held in eight months; Emma, Samantha, David, Delaney, Cameron and all the other many young people will remind their MPs every day until then. They are speaking on behalf of a deeply disturbed generation. This generation now makes up more than 25 percent of the American population. Most of them will be old enough to vote for the first time in November.