Parent's Promise To Kids

"We want parents to sign a contract . . .promising their kids that they'll vote for leaders who put kids' safety over guns."
- Adam Buchwald, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in "Florida Postcard: Sign Here" by Charles Bethea in The New Yorker (Mar 12, 2018), p29.

As diverse arguments come across my Facebook, Twitter and email feeds about who and what is responsible for mass shootings in America (parents, teachers, security guards, students, guns, government, video games, etc.), I was able to fasten onto this immensely hopeful effort by two sixteen-year old students, friends of those who died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Deciding to "change the world" rather than fall into despair, Adam Buchwald and Zach Hibshman came up with the Parent's Promise to Kids. The contract, which is simple, promises kids that their parents or grandparents or friends / aunts / uncles will vote for legislative leaders who support children's safety over guns.  You can find a link and download the contract at Facebook:  @ParentsPromiseToKids, or at www.parentspromisetokids.org.

Signing the contract, taking a photo with my kids, and posting it to social media partially satisfied my urge to do something for my children, to stand up to the madness that insists guns are OK and schools should simply be turned into high-security zones, where students will be so focused on safety that they won't be able to learn. Can they learn now, with all of the drills and news bytes?

For those who blame parents in this crisis - for not raising respectful children, for not disciplining their children - I take my share of the blame, but not for a deficiency in teaching my kids. I deserve blame for not standing up before now, for giving in to despondency on this issue and trying to block it from my consciousness.

Take hope from the following statistics in Margaret Talbot's excellent article, "Comment: Gun Shots" in the most recent issue of The New Yorker (Mar 12, 2018):

"According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted last week, eighty-eight per cent of Americans now support universal background checks, eighty-one per cent think that a person should be at least twenty-one in order to buy a gun, seventy per cent endorse a ban on high-capacity magazines, and sixty-eight percent support a ban on assault-style weapons" (p27).

So what then, is the problem? Apparently those who oppose the common-sense rules described above are extremely passionate, and focused on the single issue of lax or no gun regulation, while those of us in the vast majority find our time and attention split by other issues.  Lest we relapse, get distracted, quail before the money and passion behind the gun lobby, Talbot reminds us:
"People who want this moment to mean something should remember that they are the majority, and that they, too, can choose, for however long it takes, to be single-issue voters" (p28).

As I post this morning, I read that Florida just overcame twenty years of NRA - sponsored, pro gun lobby regulations and passed into law a bipartisan bill that makes baby steps toward commonsense regulation. The NRA responded by suing the state of Florida in federal court.  It's time to get off the sidelines and take action.