The Kids are Going Off Script

“The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice.” – Emma Gonzalez, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Student & Self-proclaimed Kid

 “There isn't any tragedy that justifies taking away the rights of innocent people.” – Austin Peterson, Candidate for Missouri Senate & Definitely a Grown-Up

Mr. Peterson apparently believes that the right to own a piece of property, namely an assault rifle, is more important than the right of a person to be alive.

Ms. Gonzalez apparently sees things differently.

I’m with her.

One week after the latest mass shooting in America, the script is changing. At this point we are in the scene in which we all are supposed to be reacting to the reactions of the people around us, telling them how their reaction is ridiculous and won’t work and how they are so naïve to think it ever would and how our reaction is obviously the more correct and reasonable one. 

This is the scene in which we forget that our neighbor's reaction isn't actually the problem, that the problem is that 17 people went to school last Wednesday and were shot and killed while they were there. But, you know, projection.

This scene is supposed to transition into the next, in which the conversation devolves into mindless yelling and nothing changes. Which brings us inexorably back to scene one again, and I think we all know what happens in scene one.

But this time, some really brave people are going off script. They are ad-libbing this scene, and it is glorious and terrifying and wonderful to see.

The actors who are going off script are mostly students, high school students. Led by people like Emma Gonzalez, high schoolers around the country are lifting their voices in smart, articulate, and courageous opposition to the status quo. With laser beam focus they are staying on message, and are showing a relentless determination that ought to have NRA politicians sweating bullets.

People kill people, the grown-ups say, not guns. Yes. Right. You did a logic thing. Groovy.

See here’s another logic thing: People with guns kill a lot more people than people without guns.

Also, people with semi-automatic guns kill a lot more people than people without those kinds of weapons. If we’re going to use logic here, let’s really use it. Assault weapons are designed for one purpose – assault. Not hunting, not home security … assault.

No one needs an assault weapon. And no, your right to own one is not more important than someone else’s right to be alive. The right to be alive supersedes the right to own property. I feel like that truth should be self-evident, or maybe even that right should be … oh what’s the word I’m looking for … ? Oh yeah – Inalienable.

So maybe the script is being rewritten this time. These kids certainly aren’t behaving in the way they are expected to. And already it is making the grown-ups nervous. Already the reactions are getting ugly. The latest is the right-wing idea that the students are being “used” by bigger political organizations as tools to advance some scary left-wing agenda.

Right, because seventeen year olds couldn’t possibly have come up with this stuff themselves, huh? Surely someone MUST be pulling their strings from behind the scenes. (Read that with a sarcastic tone of voice, by the way.)

The truth is, these student leaders are making sense. They are saying rational, reasonable things that the majority of Americans agree with, and it is making the grown-ups in places of power very nervous. And it’s fabulous!

Kids these days! Thank God for kids these days.