National Walkout Day
March 14, 2018 marks the day that students across the entire country walked out of their classes to honor the 17 students shot and killed in Parkland, Florida. The protests lasted 17 minutes, one minute for each of the victims of the massacre.
A mass of students flooded Washington DC on the day of the protest to demand that elected officials take action in an attempt to curb gun violence. These students were met by a few Democratic senators, with the independent senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, among them.
As stated by the New York Times, it is unlikely that much will be done quickly about gun violence in an attempt to curb it. Just recently, Florida raised the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21 and passed a 3 day waiting period on purchases. Anyone who wants to purchase a gun must be 21 years or older and wait 3 days in order to obtain it. But this is the biggest action that has been taken in the attempt to stop gun violence.
On the federal level, President Trump conceded to the will of the NRA, backing off of his claims that there need to be universal background checks on all gun purchases and that the age limit on who can buy a gun must be increased. Trump claimed there was little political support for raising age limits on firear
ms, which was a claim made without a source.
The students who survived the Parkland shooting, such as David Hogg or Emma Gonzales, are planning a march on Washington, which will take place on March 24th, in an attempt to demand more from elected officials on the issue of gun violence.
The relevance of the issue of gun violence is not exclusive to students in Parkland, Florida, it is an issue that all students in school have to face, including Licking Valley. More must be done in order to curb gun violence in order to stop the constant fear that another school is going to get shot up. There have been multiple mass shootings since Columbine and Donald Trump, the NRA, and the Republican party have made it clear that they couldn’t care less if more mass shootings happened, otherwise they would be in favor of something being done to inhibit gun violence.
