Strategy is key in Parkland students’ next move against gun violence

For years now, gun control activists have focused on an assault weapons ban. A noble idea, but a political nonstarter.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, who have captivated the nation with their courage and authenticity, have a chance to push the movement in a more strategic, creative and effective direction than has been done in the past. The National School Walkout is a good start. Here are three suggestions for them: First, advocate for a Broward County ordinance requiring that every privately owned military-style assault weapon be registered with the county and stored only in a county-run armory or a government-inspected and licensed private facility. No private homes. The rationale is clear: Military-style weapons should be safely stored in an armory, just as they are on every military base in the United States.

Second, educate America on the dark side of the Second Amendment’s history. Roger Williams University School of law professor Carl Bogus makes a compelling case that the amendment was appended to the U.S. Constitution to appease Southerners who wanted to preserve state-level militias designed to put down slave insurrections. This argument undermines the guns-as-resistance-to-tyranny myth at the heart of the gun rights movement, and it needs to be part of our fevered — and deeply consequential — national debate on the true intent of the Founders. And while we’re at it, let’s make it part of every school’s curriculum.

Finally, be strategic in your advocacy at the federal level. Start with the repeal of the socalled “Dickey Amendment,” 1996 legislation that has blocked federal research into gun violence. It is a shameful law — disowned, even, by its author, Congressman Jay Dickey, at the end of his life.

Since 2001, the year many high school seniors were born, the federal government has spent some $95 billion funding the National Cancer Institute and virtually nothing on research into gun violence, a major killer in its own right. We are stuck in a divisive debate over how to prevent gun violence, and we have very little of the data to move that debate forward. Will gun prohibitions tied to mental illness reduce suicides? Why are mass shooters almost always male? We just don’t know.

It’s students — and churchgoers, concertgoers, and other victims of gun violence — who suffer while policymakers stumble in the dark, beholden to the money the gun industry uses to influence public opinion. And it’s students and other victims who can make the most powerful case for shedding light on the problem.

I suggest that, after the March 24th “March for Our Lives” rally, and before the start of summer vacation, students pick a day and organize a nationwide sit-in in every district congressional office in the country to demand a repeal of the Dickey Amendment. It’s realistic. It can make a difference.

The students of Stoneman Douglas High School have taken a horrific tragedy and turned it into a movement that actually seems capable of shooting down, if you will, the tired orthodoxies of our rigid gun debate. They need not be a footnote to history. They need to keep their momentum and change history.

Tom Cosgrove, an environmental activist and political media consultant, is founder of New Voice Strategies and The Cosgrove Group, a strategic communications consulting firm.

It’s students — and churchgoers, concertgoers, and other victims of gun violence — who suffer while policymakers stumble in the dark, beholden to the money the gun industry uses to influence public opinion.