"We are going to be the last school shooting," the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors say. At the rallies they lead for stricter gun control, and when they lobby lawmakers for stricter gun laws. Thousands of other students across Florida and the U.S. walked out in support of their call.
In the month since a 19-year-old with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slaughtered 17 members of the MSD school community, the surviving students have reversed decades of National Rifle Association (NRA) tyranny. Major corporations are scrambling to dissociate their brand from the NRA. Victory! Organizing an NRA-ally boycott was the first step in the survivors' strategy.
How can public opinion shift so quickly? Actually, it didn't shift. The majority of Americans always favoured stricter gun laws. Maybe they saw a way to voice their rejection of guns. The majority of Americans also rejected Donald Trump (Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes; Trump took office because of the Electoral College vote.) In the 2016 election, Trump accepted $30 million in contributions from or through the NRA. His fortunes would seem to be tied to theirs.
On the other hand, maybe we're watching a massive public education program in progress. The speed of public opinion reversal reminds me of a story from my anti-nuke days, the story of the Hundredth Monkey[1]. Here's the Wikipedia account (which has been challenged, Wikipedia notes):
"Unidentified scientists were conducting a study of macaque monkeys on the Japanese island of Koshima in 1952. These scientists observed that some of these monkeys learned to wash sweet potatoes, and gradually this new behavior spread through the younger generation of monkeys -- in the usual fashion, through observation and repetition."
The kicker is that, in this story, "the researchers observed that once a critical number of monkeys was reached, i.e., the hundredth monkey, this previously learned behaviour instantly spread across the water to monkeys on nearby islands."
Opposing open gun use may be "learned behaviour" too. Existing gun safety groups have welcomed the surge in public concern and are doing their best to support Parkland survivors' group. Moms Demand Action, for example, created Students Demand Action and recruited 115,000 members immediately[2]. Social media sure extends recruiters' reach.
March will be a busy month for U.S. youth. The Women's March Youth EMPOWER group is calling for a 17-minute school walkout on March 14[3], a minute for each person killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
On March 24, organizers expect about half a million people to participate in the Washington, D.C. March for Our Lives. Parkland survivors have $3.7 million, raised in three days[4], to organize the event -- $1.7 million raised on GoFundMe and $2 million in $500,000 donations from George and Amal Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Look for support marches in cities across the U.S.
