March for Our Lives and Gun Violence as a Feminist Issue

B revisits our ep on gun violence to give an update on the March on Our Lives.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget and you're listening the stuff BOMB
never told you. Now I know what you're thinking. Sminthiana Tuesday.
What Well. I had such an amazing time at the

(00:26):
March for Our Lives and d C this past weekend.
I wanted to do a special re airing of the
episode that we did immediately after the shooting at Parkland. Now,
if you listen to that episode, if you already know,
I was feeling a little bit cynical about the issue
of gun violence, but I was also hopeful that a
youth led movement could actually make an impact. And I'm
happy to say an impact has been made. This past weekend,

(00:47):
at least one point two million people marched for gun
control across the US. Now, this is according to early
tallies from researchers Erica Chenowith and Jeremy Pressman. Keep in
mind these numbers are still pretty early. The researchers estimate
that there were over four fifty marches across the US
this weekend, but they only have crowd estimates for about
half of them. Still, the March for Our Lives is

(01:09):
one of the biggest rallies for gun control ever in
the nation's capital at least since the Million mom March
and two thousand and it was one of the biggest
youth protests since the Vietnam War. Now all of the
speakers were youth from diverse backgrounds. Adults were not allowed
to speak. From Emma Gonzalez standing in silence for six
minutes to Naomi Wad. They're using her speech to lift
up victims of gun violence who often go forgotten. It's

(01:31):
really difficult to pick the most poignant and powerful moment
of the event. Rene, granddaughter of martinis Key. My grandfather
had a dream that his four little children will not
be judged by the color of their skin, but by

(01:54):
the continent of their character. I have a dream that
enough is enough now. I actually had the chance to
talk to a group of youth who lived close to Parkland.
They flew all the way from Florida to d C
just to attend this march. Here's what they had to say. Hi,
I'm Ashley. I'm from South Florida and I'm seventeen years old.

(02:15):
Hi I'm Donna. I'm also from South Florida and I'm
eighteen years old. I'm Stephano. I'm from South Florida and
I'm sixteen years old. I'm Jane and from South Florida
as well, and I'm eighteen years old. So why did
you all come here today? Um? I think I think
we came here today just because, um, well, first of all,
obviously because of the partners shooting get hits so close

(02:35):
to home, but also, UM, I think it just made
us realize that our schools are are not protected in
the right way and nor should they be pet in
the right way, and so it's just so easy for
someone to bring like a like a lethal weapon onto campus. Um.
And I think for me it was more like it's

(02:57):
like exhausting at this point, like it's happened so many
time times and it seems like everything's falling on deaf ears,
so it this is more like a call for action,
um and saying like okay, this many people are fed
up with the way things are going and you know,
we're tired, and like we're raising our voices now because
we're feeling, you know, there should be some sort of
change main put forth. I think unfortunately this happens a

(03:21):
lot and just going to happen somewhere that was so
close to us. We do things like drills and you
hear about shootings, but it's it's really different when it's
somewhere that's so close to you and it feels so
close to home, and knowing people that knew people that
personally went to Douglas, it's it's hard not to to
stand up for this. For me, it was just, you know,

(03:43):
you always hear about these and they're usually far away,
different parts of the country. But to know that's something
like that happened in our backyard. And I go to
a public school and Douglas UM it's a more like
structured and they have like a lot more stuff. So
knowing that they had all those ways that could have
prevented something, and then I look at a school like
mine and that of like what that could have easily
been me. So I'm here today to show my support

(04:05):
for emnesty, and just I want my voice to be
heard because I'm tired of what's happening. Oh yeah, I'm
from Somerset Academy, which is very close to Douglas, and
I'm here to make my voice to be heard because
I'm tired of all the mass shootings and no regulation
and just I don't want any more kids to die.
So I'm really here for that. A lot of us

(04:25):
actually have friends who have family members and other friends
who go to Amnesty um, and so like it's just
really close to us. And it's weird because like Parkland
like ends up but if you live there, like you know,
it's one of the safest cities there. So to think like,
um that even for them, like this could have happened,
it's just it's kind of like, Okay, you know we're
not safe because it's just it's so it's like a

(04:45):
stop in the face. Really, like you would think that
this couldn't have happened here, but it did. So our
homecoming was actually at the hotel where all the kids
were picked up, Like that's where the parents picked the
kids up. That's where our homecoming was. So it's really
close to us. So what do you have to say
to all those folks out there? They might say, these
are just a bunch of kids. They don't know what
they're doing, they're confused, they're young. Keep the keep the

(05:08):
legislating to the adults. What do you have to say
to people like that? Well, I have to say is
that adults are always telling us that kids can change
the world and that we need to make our voices heard.
But yet when we are putting forth our voices and
like we want to be heard, they're putting us down.
And I think that shows that they're not ready for
what is going to happen. Because if all of us
are here together, is one across the nation even worldwide,

(05:31):
and we all like come together because this is what
we want, Like we don't want to have to worry
about our brothers and sisters, or friends, or our mothers,
our teachers, like losing their lives, just going to school together.
Education the reason I would say to those teachers that
it's time to wake up, or those people, it's time
to wake up, because like it's gonna happen. I just
feel like you can't tell someone to shut up, or
you can't tell them that they don't know what they're

(05:52):
talking about when it's happening to them. Um. And so
I think like the adults are the outsiders, um and
so for them to say that we don't know what
we're talking about, that we don't know about what's happening,
like the talented me to us, like it's happened to
their dad, they're not feeling the impact we are directly.
And this is like it's a result of their inaction,

(06:13):
Like none of us want to be here, but we
have to be here. So if they had done you know,
the job that they were you know, sworn into office
to do, they're disgraced like that that was the one
job that they were given and they failed. So like
the fact that we have to be here is attestment
to the fact that they've done nothing. Can I talk
to you? Are you who's Mario today? What is it?

(06:35):
Why is it important to have your stuck here? It's
very important as appearing. You can just imagine how you know,
heart wrenching it was to see other parents mourning the
loss of their children. I sent my children to school,
of course, to you know, get an education, not to
get killed. I'm so proud of all of you guys.
You know, they're the boys of the future. You know,

(06:56):
this is a senior year. They're eighteen years old, so
the next election, and you know, they have a voice.
So I'm very proud to see them. I'm so confident
that the future will be different. My generation didn't get
it done, so I'm hoping that this generation gets it done.
So I traveled all this way to ensure that his
voice and all the others are heard. You're not gonna

(07:16):
vote in your eighteen And I gotta say, it really
feels like we're a million miles away from how things
felt in the days after park Land when this episode
was originally recorded. I'm certainly feeling more hopeful. What do
you think? Did you make it to d C for
the March for Our Lives? Did you have a sister
march in your town? Let us know so right off

(07:47):
the bat, we have to start with a trigger warning.
This episode deals with gun violence. Sadly, the topic of
mass shootings is timely, and it seems like it always is.
On Wednesday, at least seventeen people were killed during a
school shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
The suspect, nineteen year old Nicholas Cruz, was arrested on
the scene. You may have seen on CNN a mother

(08:08):
who lost one of her children in this perfect shooting
pleaded with Donald Trump to do something about gun violence
in this country. Here's what she had to say. How
how do we allow a gunman to come into our
children's school? How do they get through security? What security
is there? There's no metal detectors. The gunman, the crazy person,

(08:29):
just walks right into the school, knocks down the window
of my child's door and start shooting, shooting her and
killing her. President Trump, you say, what can you do?
You can stop the guns from getting into these children's hands.
Oh my god, I honestly do not know how anybody

(08:50):
can listen to the raw grief and and sort of
carnal plea in that woman's voice, that mother's voice that
anybody was children especially must be able to relate to,
and then go on and do nothing about it, or
like Donald Trump, not even respond to that. Well. I

(09:10):
actually think that as a country, we reached a moment
where we just decided this is our new normal. I
think after Newtown, as a country, we just threw up
our hands. We decided this is our new normal. Nothing
can be done. We are numb to this issue. Once
we decided that babies could get shot at point blank
range and we weren't going to do a damn thing
about it, I think it became clear how our country

(09:31):
is reacting to this issue, and I think it is
not at all. You're not reacting at all. Yeah, it
feels like we've hit rock bottom. Do you feel like
that's true for politicians or the public, or both both.
I think when babies get killed, I think that when
we as a country agreed that it was okay that
babies got killed, Yeah, but so many people weren't okay
with that. I feel like if it ever came close,

(09:52):
it was then people made their voices, heard, organizations sprung up,
people donated. Who I mean, the parents there got so involved,
and what happened was nothing happened, right. So I it
sounds so cynical, but I think that we just all
agreed this is our normal and this is our life.
We agreed to tolerate this. In actual yeah, we decided

(10:13):
it was tolerable. And that's what I find so disgusting
that we. I mean, listen, I'm including myself in this
that when I saw the news of this breaking on Twitter,
I just thought another one. I remember when Columbine happened.
You know, I was a teenager, I was in school,
and I remember the way that parents and teachers and
administrators that was a big deal. We were all in

(10:34):
a fervor. And now, so many years later, it's so
interesting how it barely even registers, well, the frequency has
gone up so much that now we don't even know
the names of the schools. These mass shootings no longer
have individualized names. New Town was a standout and anomaly
in that regard the shootings that happen nowadays. Happened so
frequently that we can't even keep track of them or

(10:54):
or name them exactly. When you see the name of
a town trending on Twitter, you just assume there the
shooting there, and it's just it's I think it's our
new normal, and it's really sad and disgusting. So let's
talk a little bit about what happened in Florida. So Cruz,
who is the perpetrator of this attack, was described as
a troubled student, the kind of student that nobody was
surprised would do this kind of thing. In fact, he

(11:16):
was so troubled that he wasn't even allowed to carry
a backpack to school. He made threats on social media.
His social media presence was filled with pictures of dead
animals and things that you would see and think, oh,
this kid could be a threat. So it wasn't like
he was someone who was hiding in plain sight waiting
to do something. He was on people's radars. Yeah, and
according to the Anti Defamation League, he had ties to

(11:38):
white supremacist groups as well. Yeah. On social media, he
hurled slurs at Blacks and Muslims and really seem like
the kind of person who should not have access to
guns right. In fact, the FBI received a report and
YouTube was reported to just five months ago when he
commented on a YouTube video saying that he wanted to

(11:59):
become a per national school shooter. The creator of the video,
which I think was about guns, flagged the comment, alerted YouTube,
and emailed the FBI around it. And despite the fact
that his name first and last was the user name
that he was posting under on YouTube, the FBI couldn't
trace the lead back to anything. Wow. That is horrifying. So,

(12:21):
while all these traits seem like the typical markers of
a would be mass shooter, crews actually shares another trait
in common with most mass shooters, one that often goes overlooked,
and that is a history of troubling and violent behavior
toward women. In fact, you'll hear an episode from US
later this week about why it's so horrifying that our
White House, this administration seems to be able to look

(12:41):
past people with histories of violence towards women as something
that's just a personal matter and not that big a deal.
But this is a great reminder that when we treat
domestic violence or violence against women as a personal matter
and not a very serious predictor of future potentially mass violence,

(13:02):
but really violence in general, we are doing the world
a disservice. We are making the world a less safe place,
and allowing these kinds of people to have easy legal
access to guns is abhorrent. Exactly what this whole situation
underscores to me is how not seriously we take violence
against women and domestic violence. And when researchers say, hey,

(13:25):
violence against women can actually be thought of as a
risk factor for violent behavior towards the general public later on,
it just goes to show why it's so critical to
take domestic violence seriously and we're not. Well, it's interesting, right,
because that argument could also be warped into saying, is
it not enough that a domestic abuser is already violent

(13:45):
towards a woman, We have to validate the fear. We
have to double down on the relevance of that kind
of violence by saying, also, this could be a predictor
of violence towards everybody, So maybe that you'll care about
it then, right. I mean again, it goes to show
that as a country when it happens, but behind closed
door and a home, we just think it's not our problem.

(14:07):
But I think that there needs to be a shift
that domestic violence is everybody's problem. So true, so so true.
So Crewis apparently had a history of violent and troubling
behavior towards women and girls. One of his classmates told
USA Today that Crews had ultimately been expelled from school
after a fight with his ex girlfriend's new boyfriend. She
also said that he had been abusive to one of
his earlier girlfriends. Other students have pointed out that he

(14:29):
was taken with a female student to the point of stalking. Yeah.
I hate how they phrased that in the press too.
He was taken with her so much he stalked her. No,
he's stoptor yeah. And that's according to his math teacher
and another student who had said that he was formally
close friends with Crews, but cut off his friendship after
he started going after and threatening a female friend of his. Really,

(14:52):
it sounds like, in addition to a whole host of
other troubling factors going on in this kid's life that
people seemingly didn't do anything about. One of those factors
was violence and disturbing behavior toward women in his life.
And it turns out he's not alone. Let's talk more
about that after a quick break and we're back. So

(15:18):
it's probably unsurprising to you that the perpetrators of mass
shootings in modern America are overwhelmingly male, but they overwhelmingly
also have a history of domestic abuse or misogynistic behavior
toward women. Yeah, we're talking about people like Omar Matine,
the twenty nine year old who killed forty nine people
at the Pulse nightclub tragedy in Orlando in two thousand
and sixteen. He had reportedly abused his former wife on

(15:41):
a regular basis. Yeah. And the Virginia tech shooter in
April two seven, who gunned down thirty two people at
a school, was previously accused of harassing women two years earlier,
and the Virginia police actually had to order him to
stop contacting another female student. I mean, honestly, time and
time again, every single time we see a mass shooting

(16:02):
like this, one look into the typically male perpetrators background,
and you often see abusive, harassing, violent behavior towards women,
along with the whole host of other warning signs, including,
by the way, cruelty towards animals, which is certainly present
in terms of this particular most recent shooters background exactly.

(16:24):
According to Business Insider, nine out of the ten deadliest
mass shooting perpetrators have a history of threatening, committing, or
verbalizing domestic violence. And according to Every Town for Gun Safety,
mass shooters killed a partner or a family member intent
of shootings. So again, it means that this idea that
domestic violence is something that's happening in the home, you know,

(16:45):
none of our business. That kind of thinking allows people
who really might have the capability to do something on
a wider scale to fester. And what's especially traveling to
me is how easy it is for these folks to
get firearms. It's really in a mirror can form of
exceptionalism in terms of our ubiquity of firearms in this
country and the ease with which people can buy them. Technically,

(17:09):
folks who have domestic violence backgrounds on their record aren't
supposed to be able to get firearms. They're legally barred
from buying guns in our country, but many of them
have been able to get high capacity firearms. Anyway, there's
a bunch of different loopholes that the n r A
in particular has been steadfast and maintaining um and not

(17:33):
closing that make it pretty damn easy, for instance, at
gun shows, for people to get firearms without much of
a background check, and again that just goes to show
that we're not taking violence can swimming seriously as a
risk factor for mash shootings. Take for instance, the case
of Devin Patrick Kelly back in November. He went to
the church where his wife worshiped and ended up killing
twenty six people. As a convicted domestic abuser, Kelly wasn't

(17:54):
even legally allowed to have access to firearms, but he
ended up owning four. How do we allow that to
happen in this country? I mean, I think it's insane
that almost anybody, including people with such violent backgrounds or
warning signs, or just a nineteen year old dude in general,
can walk in and buy firearms that easily. And I'm

(18:18):
I'm someone who enjoys shooting guns on occasion. By the way,
members of my family are proud gun owners, but none
of them think that the way things currently are is
even remotely okay. And you know, I'm all about the
sportsmanship that comes with gun ownership. There's nothing wrong with that,
but at what cost? And certainly none of us can

(18:39):
say that the way things are is tenable. I think
that's why common sense gun laws really have quite bipartisans support.
The last time we did mass national polling on this
after Newtown, people on both sides of the aisle agreed
something needs to change. But the n r A s
chokehold on our politics is so powerful it seems all

(19:00):
it's impossible to get anything done. You hit the nail
on the head. I think most reasonable folks would say,
if you are convicted for a violent crime of domestic abuse,
you should not be able to get your hands on
a gun. Going back to the situation with Kelly, Kelly
was a member of the Air Force, which acknowledged that
he kind of slipped through the cracks. They say that
it appears that Kelly's domestic violence conviction was not entered
into the National Crime Information Centered database, which is why

(19:23):
he was able to pass the background check for a gun.
And to make things more terrifying, this case is not
that unusual. According to a Florida International University report, the
military mishandled roughly thirteen thousand domestic violence cases between two
thousand four and two thousand twelve, including misclassifications that allowed
abusers to go unreported in the n c i S.
So essentially, people who have convictions for domestic violence who

(19:45):
really should not have their hands on guns can kind
of get them. And this isn't just isolated to military personnel.
Spotty enforcement really does allow abusers to fall through the cracks.
While twenty eight states and DC have laws prohibiting convicted
domestic abusers from buy or possessing firearms, only four teen
states require those people to give up the guns they
already have. So if you have a gun in your

(20:06):
house and you get convicted of domestic violence, it's a
crapshoot whether or not you are legally required to give
up a gun that you already have in your possessions. Well,
not to mention, enforcement of that law is extremely difficult. Literally,
all that police officers have to go on is someone
else's report, like an abused, strange ex wife or partner
saying yeah, he has a firearm, a handgun. He keeps

(20:29):
it under his pillow. They knock on his door and say,
do you have a firearm. We've heard you have a handgun,
we heard you keep it under your pillow. Can you
give it to us? And literally they can say I
got no firearm here, and that's it. Stories over system,
it's insane. I definitely think having convicted domestic abusers on
the honor system it's probably a bad plan. Actually, there

(20:51):
was a story I was listening to about this on
my new local NPR station in Denver, Colorado, and granted
this very state to stay. But in Denver, the police
were saying, we oftentimes have to get in touch with
these typically men's mothers, to ask their mothers to reason
with them. Oh my god, the world is a broken place.

(21:13):
If police are asking for the unpaid labor of abusers
mothers to talk some sense into their weapon wielding abusive sons,
it's very depressing. This is so fundamentally broken. And in
other countries when things were this broken, they did something
about it and they said, hey, no guns for you

(21:35):
anymore in Australia, or hey no civilian firearms in the UK,
which is extreme and obviously we don't even need to
be that extreme to make progress here in the United States,
but our lack of action altogether is a global embarrassment.
And it seems uniquely applied to the issue of guns,
because not that long ago one guy tried to sneak

(21:56):
a bomb onto a plane in his shoe, and now
we all take far she's at the airport. So it's like,
why is it that when that happened, we needed swift
change from the top down, And when it comes to guns,
it's just this sort of do nothing approach. It doesn't
make any sense to me. The Constitution, Yeah, I mean, okay,
the Constitution, but I'm sure when the Framers wrote the

(22:18):
Constitution they were imagining semi automatic weapons. People who go
back to that, I think, did you think that the
Framers had I'm just saying, if the Framers had made
an amendment about the right to where your shoes fair,
we'd have a bigger argument about that. But instead they
happen to write the right to bear arms, and here
we are with this cluster of an interpretation war over

(22:40):
what that really means. And I'm with you how to present,
There's no way that they were talking about semi automatic
rifles that could take down an elephant being freely available
to nineteen year old I'm sure this isn't not what
they had in mind, not they were drafting the Constitution, right,
So let's talk a little bit about what can be
done about this issue if you're piste off as we

(23:01):
are after this quick break and we're back. So it
actually turns out, Emily, just like you were saying before,
that keeping guns out of the hands of convicted domestic
abusers is one of those rare issues that Democrats and
Republicans kind of agree on. Senator John Cornyn of Texas said, quote,

(23:26):
there are enormous problems with the background check system. Even
Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who's now outgoing and speaking his
truth in a way that he has in a long time,
teamed up with Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich to introduce a
bill that would require the military to accurately record and
report domestic violence convictions. And Republican governors in Utah, North Dakota, Wisconsin,

(23:50):
and Michigan have all taken steps to limit gun rights
for domestic abusers. So this does seem like an issue
that most folks are in agreement needs to be handled.
And what's more, keeping guns away from convicted domestic abusers
seems to be pretty effective, and despite my reference to
the NPR story that ran in Denver, experts agree that

(24:11):
those laws requiring abusers to surrender their guns are effective.
The states that have implemented these so called relinquishment laws
saw a fourteen percent decline and intimate partner gun homicides,
according to researchers at Boston University and at Duke University
exactly so, just to be clear, in the levels had

(24:31):
a little bit. In scientific terms, the link between domestic
violence and gun violence still remains anecdotal. Just because mass
shooters are often abusers doesn't mean that abusers are more
likely to be mass shooters. And one of the things
that so troubling about this is that this link really
needs to be studied more. So, what you're saying is
that it's a correlation, not a causal link. We actually

(24:52):
don't really know because we don't really study this enough.
These connections only become clear in hindsight, which is pretty
much too late in the case of a mass shooting.
And not to mention, we'd really not like to have
a sample size that's big enough for us to study
mass shooters in a huge way, like this is not
a sample size that we want to increase to get
better data on. We'd like to just solve this problem

(25:14):
without having to have four thousand mass shooters to study.
That's the thing, though, We already have so many mass
shootings that if we were able to study the data
that is already out there, we could probably get someplace
on this issue. Susan B. Sorens And, a professor at
the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Ortner Center
on Family Violence, basically just says that same thing. She says,
right now, we don't have enough data to have a pattern.

(25:36):
The one thing that we know that mass shooters all
have in common is that they have access to massive firepower.
That is a single unifying force. Just a thought, maybe
we shouldn't make it so easy to get semi automatic
death machines in mass to like hoard these kinds of
violent killing machine objects in people's homes. Maybe that's something

(25:58):
we all don't need to have. Emily, you sound absurd.
Of course we need to have that. That's that's what
makes this country great, Emily. This is America we're talking about.
That's part of our American exceptionalism is making sure that
people with demonstrated violent backgrounds can hoard weapons. I'm gonna
use that quote someday and I'll be like, she wasn't
being sarcastic, folks, she was being genuine, I was. But yeah,

(26:22):
A good first step in tackling this is really more research.
But here's why that's not as easy as it sounds.
The n r A has backed an amendment blocking the
CDC from doing fedterly funded research on gun violence. So
when you're hearing your politician go on TV talking about
thoughts and prayers and thoughts and prayers and thoughts and prayers,
just know that it is entirely possible that same politician

(26:44):
has taken money from the n r A, the organization
that makes it harder for the CDC to study gun violence.
Unbelievable then, I mean, I knew the n r A
was powerful, but I forgot that they have barred our
disease control, our national federal der for disease control, from
even studying gun violence and the impact it has on

(27:05):
our country. That is disgusting. It is disgusting, and it
really goes to show the stranglehold that the n r
A has on our political system. And when I see
Marco Rubio go on TV and say, you know, this
is so sad, thoughts and prayers, I am asking myself,
how much money did you get from the n r A.
If it's so sad, give back that money almost a
million exactly. And this latest shooting, which happened on his

(27:28):
turf and his state, if he even has the audacity
to show his face there, I will be shocked because
the man has taken almost one million dollars from the
National Rifle Association exactly. So you can understand why it's
a little frustrating, and it's almost impossible for me to
take his words seriously. I'm sure he didn't want this
shooting to happen, but unless he does something, who cares.

(27:51):
If he sends his thoughts and prayers. No, it's disgusting,
it's despicable. So if you want to take action and
make your voice heard on this regard right now, we
need citizen activists to step up. If we are ever
going to be able to fight back against the n
r a s stranglehold. We need everybody involved in this fight,

(28:11):
and fortunately every town dot org, an organization that was
established after the New Town shooting, and if anybody has
gotten that close to making real progress on this issue
in the past, it was then with these organizers. They
have a five step plan for anyone who wants to
make their voice heard on this issue, and the first
is to take their pledge to vote on gun safety.

(28:35):
Know how much the n r A is donating to
the campaigns of politicians you're considering, and don't vote for them.
Vote out anybody who's been taking money from the n
r A. Step one. They also say, please get registered
to vote and make sure that your friends and family
are registered to We can vote these suckers out of
office if we don't like where they stand on gun
violence prevention, and we should do just that. They also

(28:58):
recommend attending a meeting to learn about the Gun Sense
Candidate questionnaire that we can use to hold our leaders
accountable on election day. Basically, not everybody is very clear
about where they stand on gun violence. Everybody sounds like
we're all in it for the thoughts and prayers and
children and safety and YadA YadA YadA. It sounds nice
and dandy, and it's not always easy to find out

(29:19):
who's taking money from the n r a but there's
a questionnaire that every town has created where you can
really get more information and use it to go to
events and ask your politicians, ask folks who are running
for office where they really stand on the issues, and
their last recommendation is one I think is great. Run
for office your damn self. If you don't like where

(29:39):
your lawmakers stand on this issue, maybe you can do
a better job. Maybe somebody out there listening has the skills,
has the power, has the drive to get us someplace
on this issue. Maybe it's you, sminty listeners. So if
you don't like what your politicians are doing, get them
out of there and take their place. I love it.
I love it. And as a reminder, our friend Aaron
from Vote Run Lead was here with a bunch of

(30:00):
resources for how to do just that. If you haven't
heard it already, go check out our episode called eighteen
Is it Another Year of the Woman? Yeah? I know.
I started this episode talking about how I'm a bit
numb to gun violence and how it happens so often
that it almost doesn't register. And I think a lot
of people sadly feel that way. But I'm actually kind

(30:20):
of inspired because I think that this new generation cropping up,
they're not going to stand for this. And I really
think we're talking about a generation of young people who
are at the forefront of so many big political movements
me too, DOCTA, immigration reform, all the major movements. I
think it's entirely possible that they won't stand for it.
Well they shouldn't. I mean, it's children, after all, who

(30:41):
are the victims in far too many of these massacres.
And David Hogg, one of the survivors from this most
recent shooting, put it so perfectly how he and his
peers and really all of us will not stand for
inaction and are calling the grown ups in the situation

(31:02):
to action to get things done for the children we
proclaim to care about in this country. What we really
need is action. Because we can say, yes, we're gonna
do all these things thoughts and prayers, what we need
more than that is action. Please. This is the eighteenth
one this year. That's unacceptable. We're children, You guys, like
are the adults. You need to take some action and

(31:24):
play a role, work together, come over your politics and
get something done. So when you've got young people taking
grown as politicians to task, you know something needs to
be done. As Menthy listeners, we are right there with them.
Please let's work together and figure out how we can
be better on this issue. Let us know where you
stand on this issue, what you're doing to make progress
on preventing gun violence, and how we can follow through

(31:48):
on David's call to action. Hit us up on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast, find us on Instagram at stuff
mom Never Told You, And, as always, our email inbox
is open at mom Stuff, How stuff works dot com.
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