For those reading this in the weeks (and perhaps longer) following the event, no further description is necessary. For those reading this farther in the future (Hello, future people! I hope things have worked out for you. Please be aware that some of us are actively working to change the timeline to your benefit, but there's a lot of guesswork involved), this incident and its aftermaths might be in your history books. Maybe it was a significant event, one that changed things. Maybe it was just a blip, a stray thread on the tapestry of gun violence that is modern American history.
Here is what happened, in the words of the people who experienced it.
From Steph (@ohstephany_ ):
From Ivanna Paitan:
From Liz Stout:
And on. And on.
There were seventeen killed on that day in that school, most (but not all) students.
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14
Scott Beigel, 35
Martin Duque, 14
Nicholas Dworet, 17
Aaron Feis, 37
Jaime Guttenberg, 14
Chris Hixon, 49
Luke Hoyer, 15
Cara Loughran, 14
Gina Montalto, 14
Joaquin Oliver, 17
Alaina Petty, 14
Meadow Pollack, 18
Helena Ramsay, 17
Alex Schachter, 14
Carmen Schentrup, 16
Peter Wang, 15
We are just five years past the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, in which a gunman entered an elementary school and used an AR-15-style weapon to kill twenty children aged six and seven as well as six staff members. You would reasonably expect that the horror of that incident might have stirred Congress to action to, at the very least, limit accessibility of weapons to profoundly mentally ill individuals like the shooter. But you would be wrong. Spurred by the NRA, Congress took no action to increase restrictions of any sort, and sales of the weapon used in the shooting soared.
The Pulse Nightclub shooting.The Las Vegas shooting, currently the largest mass shooting carried out by an individual. A movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. A Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. A town hall meeting. A Congressional softball practice. Hundreds, thousands of dead police officers. None of these have spurred action.
Why does this time feel different?
This time the attack was on a generation just coming of age - literally; many of them turned eighteen shortly before or shortly after the shooting. It's a generation tuned into social media, and ready to use it in ways older generations can't conceive. High school students are generally full of piss and vinegar anyway. Now they have come under attack - again, literally - and have turned their youthful energies and their creativity against the forces that have promoted inaction in the aftermath of past incidents.
They are taking action - publicly, and in a way that allows the general public to both observe and interact. For now, Twitter is their main medium, but they are also not shy about using traditional news media and TV shows to get their message across. And as elections roll around, many of them plan to be very active at the polling place.
Will they be able to persist in their efforts? A part of me wants to say that the trauma they have just experienced will keep them going. But I know that in many cases trauma spurs a desire to move on from the memory of the trauma, lest it consume the one who experienced it. How many will be destroyed by this experience? How many will just want to forget it?
They have vowed that they will be the last generation to experience mass shootings. Their banner, their rallying cry, their hashtag, is #NeverAgain. Will they succeed? There have already been more deaths - the "accidental" shooting of Courtlin Arrington at Huffman High School in Alabama, the murder of three workers - one of them seven months pregnant - at a veterans' facility in California. I fear that next Valentine's Day, as a holiday that now commemorates a mass shooting at a high school, some pundit will sardonically rattle off the number of mass shootings since "Never Again" was declared. Will the survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas still be carrying on the fight? Will we be fighting alongside them?
Here's a non-exhaustive list of Twitter feeds to follow. Please "like" and repost relevant tweets to boost the signal and keep the fire burning and the memories of those murdered alive.
@NeverAgainMSD
@fred_guttenberg
@Ryan_Deitsch
@giu0807
It's good to see you posting again--always enjoyed your blogs.
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