In the everyday more divided United States of America, there is no issue in which its politicians and citizens can agree. However, this situation changes at times, and even the most reluctant put aside their petrified convictions when reality jumps into their faces and surprises them, shakes them, depresses them, upon learning of the deaths of more innocent people, victims of unleashed and senseless violence, of mass shootings, which are increasingly taking place in schools, from Connecticut to Colorado, from Texas to Florida.
And once again the debate about the need to safeguard the right of citizens to possess arms to defend themselves against possible aggressions, guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, is at the center of attention of this society and in general of the whole world, after a student kills 17 people and wounds another 16 in the school from which he was expelled at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Not long ago, The Washington Post released a document that states that students who have been affected by acts of violence with firearms, since the one in Columbine, Co., 19 years ago, are more than 150 thousand, in At least 170 schools around the nation. These children and adolescents suffer the psychological consequences of the episodes.
In Mr. Trump’s America, the mass shootings are repetitive news. It seems at times that we are once again endeavoring the same old story.
First, the shock, pain and indignation for the innocent lives that were lost without meaning. Second, the rage and impotence, the groups that fight for gun control claim that you do not need a semiautomatic rifle to defend yourself. Third, the lobbyist of the N.R.A. come to the stage with all their monies and old tricks (this time president Trump said that allowing teachers to bring guns to the classrooms may be a solution). And then, nothing happens. The cycle repeats itself with the next massacre.
#Never Again
The survivors of the Florida massacre have decided that they will be the generation that will go down in history as the one that finally managed to stop the senseless violence, and immediately after the massacre they started #NeverAgain campaign, the movement that had a surprising answer and support from schools throughout the American Union.
Through social networks the survivors of Marjory Stoneman High School Douglas called for a national march on March 24 in the capital of the country, March for Our Lives they called it, and in the same way that the multitudinous demonstration of women, other sister marches are being organized in the different states of the American Union.
We said at the beginning that it seemed that at times the American society seems to agree on a topic, and if, to begin with, they all condemn the massacre, the next natural step should be to listen to the kids voices in order to regulate the open sale of R-15 and such kind of massive killing weapons. After all, as they put it in a televised debate, “this is our fight now, you ruined your opportunity”.
