The Students Who Survived the Parkland, Florida, Shooting Aren’t Interested in “Thoughts and Prayers”
Students who survived the Parkland, Florida, shooting on Wednesday are vocalizing their grief and outrage on Twitter, where they are flatly refusing to accept the usual empty condolences, thoughts, and prayers from pundits, legislators, and Donald Trump. At least 17 people died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a 19-year-old former student carrying an AR-15 opened fire outside and inside the school. The attack marks what is now the 18th school shooting in America so far in 2018—and the teens who have inherited a world in which mass shootings and their casualties have increased so dramatically, with no signs of adults doing anything about it, are refusing to be silent.
Not only were the students pushing for concrete action to prevent more mass shootings, many of them reacted with anger specifically at Donald Trump’s response to the shooting, which was to tweet a generic message of support for victims, one that has become something of a form letter for him, and to shift focus on the shooter’s mental health history rather than on gun laws: “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”
Parkland students were quick to condemn Trump’s unwillingness to confront the gun lobby—which makes sense when one considers the $30 million dollars the National Rifle Association spent in support of his presidential campaign in 2016.
Elsewhere, Parkland teens refused to give noted right-wing pot-stirrer Tomi Lahren a pass when she too tried to deflect a renewed national discussion on gun control, tweeting, “Can the Left let the families grieve for even 24 hours before they push their anti-gun and anti–gun owner agenda? My goodness. This isn’t about a gun it’s about another lunatic. #FloridaShooting.” Nothing like traumatized victims who were listening to gunshots ring out in the hallways of their high school less than 24 hours ago to remind a TV commentator that, yes, it actually is very much about guns.
They were also incensed at claims that Snapchat and cellphone recordings of the violence were somehow a signal of generational flippancy or naïveté, as said by conservative YouTuber Mark Dice, who issued a now-deleted tweet criticizing terrified students for taking out their phones during the attack. “Someone want to tell the Gen Z kids that in the event of a school shooting, they should call 911 instead of posting video of it on Snapchat,” the tweet said.
What’s more, one Parkland high schooler was even willing to call out media descriptions of the shooter that neglected to use the language of “terrorism,” terminology that’s quickly associated with perpetrators of mass violence who are non-white.
In a week where teens displayed a playful and uncanny sense of self-confidence and joy at the Winter Olympics, it is heartbreaking and sobering to see them speak with such fervor and clarity in the wake of such an attack, only hours after losing some of their peers and mentors. And it provides a small semblance of hope for future generations unwilling to submit to the influence of the NRA. As 17-year-old David Hogg, begging representatives in Congress with the power to curb gun sales to act, said in a television interview: “We are children. You guys are, like, the adults. Take action, work together, come over your politics, and get something done.”
