Kansas City marches against gun violence again this weekend. Will leaders listen now?
What will it take to stop the mass murders of our children? When will our legislators listen to their cries and do something?
Four years ago, I was inspired by the efforts of Kansas City area teens who organized a major rally as part of a national youth movement against gun violence that took place in the spring of 2018, right after the horrific mass shooting that killed 17 people and wounded 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
I thought, as many others did, that the youth involvement in the fight would finally make obstinate lawmakers listen — especially to someone like Rachel Gonzalez.
A college freshman at the time of the Parkland shooting, Gonzalez thought as I did: that our children and their pleas could not be denied.
Sadly — no, infuriatingly — we were both wrong. It’d be easy to give into despair. When it comes to gun violence, lots of people have. A new poll out this week by CBS News shows that nearly half of all respondents who identified as Republicans (44%) said that mass shootings, like those that happened recently in Texas and New York, are “unfortunately something we have to accept as part of a free society.”
Let that sink in for a moment: A significant number of Americans think it’s better to sacrifice our children than to try to rein in the country’s out of control gun violence.
“It’s frustrating,” said Gonzalez, who is now a national organizer for the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence. But she said she’s not giving up the fight to curb these shootings. Along with a group of other galled young adults and teens, she is planning another anti gun-violence rally and March For Our Lives event. Again, this march is part of a national outcry, “because our elected officials have done nothing, passed no legislation about ending gun violence. I’m tired of the inaction,” Gonzalez told me on Monday.
The march is scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday in Kansas City’s Gillham Park. A march to Theis Park to meet up with supporters attending the city’s PrideFest will follow.
This weekend’s rally follows mass killings that include 10 murdered on May 14 at a grocery store in Buffalo and 19 children and two teachers gunned down ten days later at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
The last youth-organized anti-gun rally drew about 6,000 people of all ages and backgrounds. I can’t help thinking that if people were so fed up at that time, then this weekend’s gathering should be even more momentous. Nothing could be more important than getting really loud about gun control if it helps to stop the mass murder of schoolchildren.
Olathe East joins Sandy Hook on school shootings list
When the March for Our Lives last rallied in Kansas City and across the country, there were 24 incidents of gun-related violence in the nation’s schools and 114 people were either killed or injured. Thirty-five of those killed in 2018 were children according to Education Week, which has been tracking those shootings for the last four years. In the following three years, there would be 95 more such school shootings.
It makes me angry that this keeps happening, and I know that I am not alone because polls show large majorities of Americans support stronger gun restrictions.
What makes me sad is that Gonzalez and others in what she calls the “school shootings generation” don’t find those numbers surprising.
She was born just a few months before the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School outside Denver, where two troubled teens with semiautomatic weapons murdered 13 people — a dozen students and a teacher.
Nicholas Clark, a 19-year-old Kansas State University freshman, wasn’t even born yet.
Both of them spent their entire school careers living through the terror of mass school shooting after mass school shooting — Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, to name a few. As early as kindergarten, they’ve drilled with teachers on where to hide and what to do if a gunman shows up at their school searching for victims.
“I went to school every year wondering if it would be the year my school would be the next one,” Clark said. Last year, one year after he graduated from Olathe East High School, a shooting did occur at his alma mater. The alleged shooter, a student, and two others were injured.
Gonzalez said even now, when she goes into a restaurant, “I’m watching the door, checking for exits just in case, because that’s what we’ve been taught.
When I was in school, we had fire drills. But I never worried that somebody was coming to kill me. And that’s what kids worry about today.
“America is not a safe place to go to school and not a safe place to live,” Gonzalez said.
And of course she doesn’t want to be again leading chants against gun violence at another rally. But, she said, “it’s important to hold our elected officials accountable and nothing will change if people don’t raise their voice.”
And even if again no solid changes are made, Gonzalez said, “I’m going to continue doing everything I can to make a difference.”
I’m grateful that young people, like Gonzalez and Clark, still believe change can come in this fight against gun violence.
They want what I want. And what we all should want: for America to be a safer place to live and for children to feel safe in school. To that end, Gonzalez said she will keep pushing and protesting.
“I will be out there with my signs at 95 years old if that’s what it takes,” Gonzalez said. But I sure hope the killing has long stopped before then.
This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 12:30 PM.
