Young voices getting louder in gun debate

The winds of change are coming in the nation’s gun control debate and they are being led by young people.

The voices are getting louder. This week they will build once again.

They are the voices of young people, tired of having targets on their backs.

Students here in the region and across the country plan to walk out of school Wednesday, the one-month anniversary of the latest mass school shooting. This time it was in Parkland, Fla.

A clearly troubled young man who had been expelled from the school calmly walked back in on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, and started shooting.

Before he fled, 17 people – most of them students – were dead.

It’s not the first time we’ve been down this road.

Young people are hoping it will be the last. And they are taking action to that effect.

Wednesday’s walkout will be followed by a massive youth march on Washington, D.C., on March 24. It is being called the March for Our Lives.

Students and staff in this region are taking part in Wednesday’s action to pay their respects to the students and staff who lost their lives inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The echoes from the gunfire inside the school had barely stilled when the reverberations rang out across the country.

Far from the numbing disbelief and silence that settled in after Sandy Hook – a result of the uneasy acknowledgement that someone could actually walk into an elementary school and open fire on innocent children – this time the latest wave of victims are fighting back.

Young people are raising their voices – and taking action.

They drove more than 400 miles to converge on the state capital in Tallahasee to push for changes in gun laws.

Last week their actions brought results, with the Florida Legislature, which had initially rejected changes in gun laws, enacting tough new legislation.

The new Florida law raises the age limit to buy a gun from 18 to 21.

It also creates a “guardian” program that enables teachers and other school employees to carry guns.

It already has sparked a lawsuit from the National Rifle Association, saying it violates Second Amendment rights.

Students also traveled to Washington, D.C., where they sat in the White House with President Trump and gave heart-rending testimony – not only to what happened in their school – but also to what can and should be done to make sure this recurring American nightmare does not occur again.

Tomorrow, that movement goes nationwide.

Students plan to walk out of school and observe 17 minutes of silence - one minute for each Parkland victim.

For the most part, administrations and superintendents have been supportive. Most of the events are being restricted to students and staff, with no option for the public to join the protests.

Many students attended a planning session March 5 hosted by the anti-gun violence group Delco United for Sensible Gun Policy.

Strath Haven student Max Carp said he was inspired by the actions taken in the wake of the latest shooting by his fellow students in Florida.

“Seeing (Marjory Douglas Stoneman) students and how they can have hope made me feel that it would be selfish for me not to have hope and get active,” he said.

Wednesday’s walkout will be followed by the march on Washington little more than a week later, on March 24.

Similar marches are being held across the country, including ones planned for Philadelphia and the suburbs.

The horror of school shootings – seared into our consciousness by the names of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Parkland – is matched only by the horror that they keep happening.

Now, young people, the ones who find themselves cowering in closets, under desks and inside locked classrooms as the worst imaginable kind of mayhem is unleashed on their schools, are saying, “enough.”

They are raising their voices – and taking action – to institute the kind of change that adults have so far failed to deliver.

In a way, they are following in the footsteps of their grandparents in the ’60s.

Once again, the answer is blowing in the wind.

And the winds of change – spurred by the voices of young people - are coming to the nation’s gun policies.