Hey, hey, ho, ho silly slogans got to go

Gun protesters should study what democracy looks like

Yesterday students across Massachusetts took to the streets to demand gun control, many of them chanting “This is what democracy looks like.”

Kids, you need to look again.

The hundreds of students who walked out of their homes (schools in much of the Boston area were closed due to weather) and up to the State House were, absolutely, putting democracy into practice. They called for gun control, for an end to gun violence in schools. Oh yeah, one more thing: A repeal of the Second Amendment.

And gun confiscation. Definitely gun confiscation — along with abolishing the National Rifle Association.

Not all the students called for these extreme measures, of course. And smart politicians like Democratic state Reps. David Linsky and Marjorie Decker were on hand to channel this energy into support for a specific bill that could actually pass: The “Extreme Risk Protective Order” law they’re pushing.

But temporarily seizing guns from the mentally distressed was not why these kids walked from Somerville to Beacon Hill through the slush. No, they want action.

“Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go!” was one popular chant, accompanied by a “F--- the NRA” sign. To many of these kids, the NRA is little more than a murder squad. “NRA = Bloodshed” was another prominent sign at yesterday’s event.

“I saw signs with ‘Second Amendment’ and a big X across it,” local Second Amendment supporter Sean McKeon, who showed up at the rally, told me. “I’m glad students came out to support something, but I still see it as propaganda being fed to them as part of the war on guns.”

This is the ethos behind the entire movement, from Boston to Broward County, Fla.: The NRA is illegitimate, gun ownership is evil and anyone who disagrees has blood on his hands. As Parkland student and protest organizer Michelle Lapido said on CNN’s town hall:

“I have a question for the NRA and all of you puppet politicians that they are backing. Was the blood of my classmates and my teachers worth your blood money?”

Two other Parkland student organizers, Emma Gonzales and David Hogg, have called the NRA “child murderers” and accused them of “funding the killers.”

Hey, hey, whoa, whoa — no wonder they’ve “got to go,” if that’s what you believe.

Only, the concept of “got to go” is completely incompatible with the idea of “democracy.” When these students demand that the NRA be shut down, what they’re really shutting down is the democratic process for more than 5.5 million Americans who are members of the organization. And there are tens of millions more Americans who would never pay the $40 for a membership card, but who also support the right to own guns.

Are they — these millions of peace-loving American citizens — really bloodsoaked child murderers? And more to the “what democracy looks like” point: Can a democracy work if one group of citizens dismisses dissent as being “pro-murder”?

In many ways, this debate mirrors the debate over abortion — except that the media would go crazy if a mass of pro-lifers showed up on Beacon Hill screaming “child murderers!” at anyone who disagreed.

There’s a reason why Congress isn’t going to pass a ban on all semi-automatic weapons — a goal of the student movement. And that reason is called “democracy.” Elected representatives of the people know that if they did pass a law making it illegal to own a typical rifle or pistol (80 percent of guns sold in the U.S. are “semiautomatic”), they’d be voted out in the next election.

Their replacements would then vote to repeal the ban, just as elected representatives allowed the so-called “assault weapon” ban to expire in the 1990s. They didn’t have the votes to reinstate it, because the politicians didn’t have the support of the people.

In fact, while these students were calling for repeal of the Second Amendment, a federal judge was bringing a halt to an attempted ban on some “assault weapons” by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. The court found that gun store owners “have a plausible claim” that Healey’s actions violated the Constitution.

And that, kids, is what democracy looks like.