Not paper targets: America's youth seize control of narrative on guns

David Berkowitz shot and killed six people and wounded several others between the summers of 1976 and '77, because a barking dog told him to do it. He is dubbed a serial killer.

Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of concert goers in Las Vegas in 2017, killing 58 people and injuring more than 850. He is called a mass shooter.

Berkowitz used a .44 caliber pistol and his crimes occurred over nearly a year.

Paddock used a cache of dozens of legally purchased, semi-automatic, high powered rifles converted, in some cases legally via bump stocks, into fully automatic weapons.

His crime took 10 minutes.

Such is the evolution of mass murder in America. Such is the evolution of guns.

And yet, after the Las Vegas shooting there was minimal response from legislators and almost no changes to the laws regarding gun purchases or the bump stocks used to convert the semi-automatic rifles into fully automatic.

Instead we heard the tired clichés of "our thoughts and prayers are with you" and "now isn't the time to talk about gun control."

We heard it after nearly 50 people died in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016. And before that, we heard it after 20 elementary school children and six teachers were killed in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. And after all the mass shootings in between.

Each time we have heard it. And each time the weasel went around the mulberry bush, and we the monkeys chased it.

It wasn't until this year, on Feb. 14 -- Valentine's Day -- that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz walked onto the campus of his former high school in Parkland, Florida, and killed 13 of his former classmates and three teachers, that a national movement has taken hold.

Tomorrow, the masses will speak in a collective voice through public demonstrations as March For Our Lives rallies take place simultaneously across the country.

Here in Wayne County, one such rally, backed by Wayne County Strong, kicks off at 2 p.m. in Goldsboro. Largely comprised of students, these rallies will signify a unified voice that the laws that govern gun purchases need to be changed and the ways that mental health is evaluated need to be strengthened.

But this time, the kids rather than the adults have the floor. And rather than the same clichés we've heard before, the talking points these young people are espousing call for immediate action and an open-ended dialogue.

The youth of this generation no longer wish to be targets, silent and stationary. They will instead speak up, converge together and demand change.

The money, they say, might be on the side of the lobbyists for now, but time is on the side of the teens who, as they have come of age, have watched their friends die in their very classrooms.

Published in Editorials on March 22, 2018 11:00 PM