This time feels different. Call it a confluence of events, a tipping point—whatever. But it feels like that moment when a movement that values America’s right to live without fear is truly starting to take flight, pushing the gun issue beyond the realm of mere policy and talking points.
The game changer of course is the Parkland students and Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting survivors who are just young enough to believe change is possible and just old enough to drive that change. And they are right—both morally and politically; they are world-wise in a way no one could have predicted and they have had enough of the cowardice that has allowed our country to become a killing field at the hands of just about anyone.
The kids are smart. They have a target: the NRA, which they know is synonymous with Republicans. They have an ask: sensible legislation. And they already know none of that legislation will move without an electoral threat.
"The people in the government who are voted into power are lying to us,” Stoneman Douglas superstar Emma González declared Saturday in her call-to-arms speech. “These people, who are funded by the NRA, are not going to be allowed to remain in office.”
Responding on Tuesday to false right-wing smears that some of these budding pro-safety activists were "crisis actors" (a viral conspiracy theory spread on Facebook), González called her rage "indescribable" and wrote, "We are not forgetting this come midterm elections."
Turns out a Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday shows that González isn't alone: Support for gun safety is at an all-time high, 66-31 percent, with universal background checks polling at a nearly unanimous 97-2 percent (including 97-3 percent among gun owners) and an assault weapons ban getting 67-29 percent support.
"If you think Americans are largely unmoved by the mass shootings, you should think again. Support for stricter gun laws is up 19 points in little more than 2 years," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
The findings in that poll are buttressed by exit polling from Virginia elections last year in which voters picked guns as their No. 2 issue (behind health care) and, importantly, just as many Democratic voters said their vote was motivated by it as did Republican voters—49 percent. Pundits are not catching on to this shift yet and continue to spout the conventional wisdom that pro-gun advocates are more passionate about the issue than pro-safety advocates.
But guess what? Even Republicans are sensing a movement is afoot, and it's not heading in their direction. With no apparent pre-planning, the White House suddenly announced on Tuesday a directive on restricting bump stocks (which will likely amount to nothing) and GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania has now decided the time is right to re-introduce a bill to expand background checks.
Perhaps that's because the March 24 "March For Our Lives" inspired by the Stoneman Douglas students is taking flight before our very eyes.
Now for the cherry: the NRA's currently in a bit of a pickle. As Huffington Post's Mike Signorile writes of the group:
The engine of conservative politics in America has still failed to adequately respond to last month’s explosive story from McClatchy quoting two sources that confirmed the FBI is investigating whether Russia funneled money to the NRA specifically to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election. NRA spokespeople refused to respond to various media outlets, only telling National Public Radio that the group has “not been contacted” by the FBI. [...]
Per last month’s McClatchy investigation, the NRA may even be intricately woven into the story of Russia’s attack on American democracy.
At the very least, the NRA, from what we know so far, has connected with prominent Russians close to Vladimir Putin, an adversary of this country and of human rights, for years. The New York Times dropped a bombshell in December, reporting that NRA member and conservative activist Paul Erickson was trying to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin.
Right. Shorter: the NRA's playing defense just as the brave student activists from Parkland are discovering their collective strength.
Believe it or not, political miracles happen. When marriage equality activists rebounded from a couple dozen anti-gay marriage amendments in the mid-aughts to achieving full marital rights a decade later, that was a political miracle. Pollsters marveled. But what they couldn't measure was a generational shift coming of age and maturing in kitchen-table conversations across the country. Eventually, nearly everyone knew someone.
That is quite possibly what we are witnessing here: A generation of kids who grew up watching horrific carnage and quietly fearing for their lives in what should be the safest of spaces—schools.
The NRA has been living on borrowed time for many years. Wholly owned by gun manufacturers now, the organization's at-any-cost gun-pushing agenda is so perverted that it's unrecognizable to even a large swath of gun owners.
The NRA bought those borrowed years by funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to Republican lawmakers, who in turn became totally disconnected from actual voters on gun safety. GOP lawmakers have voted at the direction of the NRA for so long without consequence that they probably cannot see the generational hammer that's getting ready to drop on them. But you can't defy the will of the voters indefinitely. At some point, living on borrowed time catches up with you and the Parkland students are the first indication that the NRA's decades-long rein is coming to an abrupt end.
As one Iowa student told ABC: “Not all of us can vote … not all of us do have that say, but we will eventually.”
Time’s up.
