America's gun laws will change. Count on it.
They already are changing, if only in limited ways.
But more change will come, just as surely as those hundreds of thousands of Americans packed themselves shoulder to shoulder in Washington, D.C., and in city after city last weekend to support the student-led March for Our Lives.
Credit the determined students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., with igniting the movement.
Their high school fell victim to a Valentine's Day school shooter who left 17 of their classmates and teachers dead and injured 15 more. The survivors' lives were impacted in that six minutes and 20 seconds the gunman sprayed bullets into hallways and classrooms.
Last weekend, Emma Gonzalez, an 18-year-old survivor who has become one of the memorable faces of the movement, dramatically captured the senselessness of the gun violence in her school.
The last of the speakers for the D.C. rally, she started out naming individual victims and citing ordinary life events each would never experience again. Then she named the rest who "would never ..."
Her voice trailed into silence as she stood staring into the Washington crowd. She remained silent, tears streaming down her face, until a timer signaled that six minutes and 20 seconds had passed since she had come on stage.
The discomforting quiet made her point.
In mere minutes, a teen-aged gunman with an AR-15 had taken all those lives, injured others and left an indelible mark on the Parkland community.
"Fight for your lives before it is someone else's job," she cautioned.
The Parkland incident -- rather, the students' collective reaction to it -- is quite possibly the catalyst that will force significant change not just in gun laws but also in the gun culture in this country.
The Parkland school shooting is hardly the only one to leave its mark. The U.S. is now decades deep into such mass shootings, not just in schools but in other public places as well.
What's more, the numbers killed in mass incidents pale in comparison to all the other gun violence that claims American lives every day of the world.
Last weekend, young people representing those other victims of gun violence stood with the Parkland kids. They told how their siblings and friends died just trying to get home from urban schools and how the deaths of victims of color get no headlines and little attention in a world desensitized to everyday abuse and murder.
All of their voices resonated as they echoed the "enough is enough" call for change.
National polling has long shown broad public support for comprehensive background checks of gun purchasers and other common-sense gun controls. Yet the U.S. Congress has responded instead to the gun lobby led by the National Rifle Association.
These students intend to mobilize their peers, their parents, everyone of like mind to get action on gun reform from government leaders -- or trade those officials for leaders who will respond.
It sounds so easy. It will not be. But that may be the most encouraging aspect of the #Never Again movement spurred by these dedicated teenagers.
They know last weekend's march was the beginning of their "revolution," as another of the Parkland students called it.
Leading up to the march on Washington, the Florida students had already marched on state leaders in Tallahassee and won some advance in gun-related legislation there.
They also led student walkouts across the nation on March 14, just a month past the Parkland shootings, and will do it again on the April 20 anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting in Colorado
In the meantime, they're calling for town halls with sitting congressmen all across the nation, or, if those who hold the offices won't meet with them, with their opponents in this year's mid-term elections.
Importantly, anytime these activists gather, they will emphasize that participants must carry their passion to the ballot box. They must register and they must vote.
Are you discounting the likelihood that they will succeed? Go online and listen again to their speeches, hear their conviction, see their outreach to all victims of gun violence.
That same fervor was being repeated all across the nation, including In Arkansas.
The numbers of demonstrators here were comparatively small.
Nevertheless, even in Republican stronghold Benton County, more than 400 turned out on the Bentonville Square for Saturday's rally. Better than 3,000 marched in Little Rock. More demonstrators gathered in Springdale and elsewhere.
Proponents of stronger gun laws are up against an especially tough gun culture in this state, but Arkansas' young advocates for change still might find some success.
Not even Arkansas is immune to the #NeverAgain message.
Commentary on 03/28/2018