The most frustrating thing about being young is an overbearing adult.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look in the mirror.
Whenever they get passionate, you sigh, and act as if they don’t have a clue about the “real world.”
That’s what many of today’s youth are running up against in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Florida.
In their attempt to get lawmakers to listen to their pleas for gun control, they are met with the double talk of a “broken system” or rebuffed with the lame excuse they have not made an “appointment.”
They are made to look as if they are play actors in some contrived scheme, belittling their fears of seeing classmates mowed down in the hallway, horrors that we as children could not fathom.
Instead of accepting another mass shooting with sickened resignation, these youth are determined to make it America’s tipping point on gun control.
“Adults are letting us down,” said Cameron Kasky, a Florida high school student who survived the shooting and was interviewed on Face the Nation.
As the daughter of a police officer, Kasky said she understands the proper role of guns, but questions why our laws allow everyday Americans to own semi-automatic weapons such as the AR15. Such a gun is “not needed to protect your house from robbers. It’s not needed to hunt bears. An AR15 is a weapon of war,” she said.
The students are challenging politicians to change the laws so that they work to prevent violence, not react to it. Their suggestions include:
1. Raising the age to purchase such assault weapons from 18 to 21;
2. Increasing mental health screenings so that guns don’t fall into the hands of the wrong people, and
3. Strengthening criminal background checks.
IT’S GOING to take a mountain of support to effect change. Let’s hope this is a genuine start.
May teens’ efforts not be in vain
