I recall seeing a headline somewhere that suggested the opinions of the teenagers and young adults should be disregarded. Since I didn’t read the article, I don’t really know the reason given, but I’ll guess it’s because they’re young and inexperienced.
But here’s the thing – the incessant school shootings are becoming the defining incidents for that generation. Remember your history, specifically how the assassination of JFK defined the Boomers? I once asked my Mom, who was about 20 at the time of the assassination, about some remark I’d heard about the nation’s mothers coming together to help raise JFK’s youngest child, JFK, Jr., after the assassination, and she replied that, yes, she and all the other mothers of that generation really had felt that obligation, a collective obligation towards the Kennedy family. They had felt it on that tragic, historic day that JFK’s coffin rolled down the street
As much as I’ve never felt a part of any generation, I do acknowledge that the idea of generations do exist for many people, tied together by some incident with a large impact. For those Americans currently in their early teenage years through, say, their early twenties, these school shooting incidents, and, to a lesser extent, other mass shooting incidents, taken together, are becoming their defining set of moments. It’ll tie them together, the background fear, the preparations to survive sudden death in the form of armed madness – and, for a few well-publicized students, the marching out of schools, hands held high, under the gaze of the police – and the bodies.
I must admit that I didn’t pay much attention to the news yesterday, being busy and not much of a news watcher in any case. However, my Arts Editor (and wife), who is currently in Michigan caring for her ill mother, did have the opportunity to watch a lot of news coverage of the event. I gathered two things from talking with her. First, she was impressed by the March.
Second, the variance in coverage. The traditional mass media covered in depth and seemed to be earnest about getting the story. Fox News?
Not so much.
But it doesn’t matter, because those of that age range who didn’t go will avidly pursue news about the March. We are a social animal, we look for cues from others as to how to behave. They are a generation raised in an ocean of information. They’ll find that information regarding the March, regardless of the failures of news organizations with slanted agendas, and think about it.
And they’ll remember. Granted, humans don’t get their brains fully connected and working until their twenties, often their later twenties. This is how science understands the brain today.
But they’ll remember. They’ll remember their dead schoolmates. They’ll remember the calls for gun control.
And they’ll remember who opposed the more sane approach to guns, the one used by many other nations around the world. Who was in control of Congress and did nothing? The Republicans.
Oh, they made some sad noises, didn’t they? But they’ve done just enough, in their minds. Clarifying the Dickey Amendment surely must mean something!
This will become a blot upon the Republican brand. A big blot. The blot that drives away a generation.
And this may be the beginning of the end of the National Rifle Assocation (NRA) as an important political force. They are the 2nd Amendment absolutists who push the assertion that more guns of all kinds make for a safer society. As the years have passed, their statements have become more and more unhinged; with their unexpected victory in the Presidential campaign, they lost their biggest rallying threat – that a liberal President would take away everyone’s guns – and have resorted to incoherent statements seeking to invoke basic fears about government taking away our guns and enslaving us all.
Here’s their statement on the March, via MSN:
“Stand and Fight for our Kids’ Safety by Joining NRA,” it said. “Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.”
This was an opportunity for them to reverse their course and begin a reasonable conversation on how to reduce gun violence. It was a test of their sanity. They failed. That failure, that clinging to a failed ideology, that desperate grasp of power, will be remembered by the young Generation which held a peaceful, civic-minded March. In a country of often limited rights, the NRA are the ones shouting that their favorite right should be unlimited – that not even training should be required.
In the end, the reactions of the forces for 2nd Amendment absolutists will define their fate for the generation that made it’s way to the nation’s capital and demonstrated one of the highest forms of civil discourse possible in our society. If they continue to pursue a course marked by a refusal to acknowledge that rights are necessarily limited in any society, this generation will not contribute to them, be it bodies or money.
And those leaders in positions of responsibility who did nothing? Their legacy will be that of shame and dishonor, no matter how much they shout they did the right thing by doing nothing, by digging their heels in and indulging in ludicrous proposals. Because legacies are defined by those who came after, and that’ll be the generation that Marched.
A Generation that felt its lives were risked, and lost, for a fallacious ideology.
