Today’s Activists Are Tomorrow’s Voters
Students in America keep getting slaughtered, and they’ve finally had enough, taking to the streets. In March tens of thousands of middle school and high school students nationwide walked out of their classes to protest the stubborn lack of gun reform by their supposedly wiser elders. Then later that same month, in Washington, D.C., and across the world, they took part in the March for Our Lives protest.
The politicians cannot ignore this movement—these are children with no political ax to grind. Too many of them have experienced the carnage firsthand, and they can’t be demonized by the right as gun-grabbing ideologues. In a way, they’re like the Vietnam veterans against the war—they’re survivors, and they have more credibility than the average activist on the street. Already they have forced some legislative changes. In Florida, where the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre occurred, the governor signed a bill raising the minimum age for buying a firearm to 21 and extending the waiting period to three days.
