Emma Gonzalez, one of the students who survived the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, gave an impassioned speech calling for this one, finally, to “be the last mass shooting.” During a gun control rally that coincided with Trump’s visit to the state, Gonzalez read a speech while holding her AP Government notes. She had two firm messages for politicians who lie about the efficacy of gun control laws while accepting donations from the NRA: Shame on you, and we call bullshit.
If the above video doesn’t work in your region, you can also see her speech on Twitter:
“They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS!” Florida high school shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez calls on President Trump and lawmakers to tighten gun restrictions in impassioned speech at an anti-gun rally in Fort Lauderdale https://t.co/DgnqrrVs9x
— CNN (@CNN) February 17, 2018
“We need to pay attention to the fact that this isn’t just a mental health issue,” Gonzalez said. “He wouldn’t have harmed that many students with a knife … If you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead, so it’s time to start doing something!”
She then emphasized that this shooting was not the fault of the victims. Instead, it was in part “the fault of the people who let him buy the guns in the first place. Those at the gun shows. The people who encouraged him to buy accessories for his guns to make them fully automatic. The people who didn’t take them away from him when they knew that he expressed homicidal tendencies.”
She then called out Donald Trump for his loathsome and victim-blaming tweet about the shooting. “If the president wants to come up to me,” she said, “and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy, and how it should never have happened, and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m gonna happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.”
Of course, Gonzalez already knew how much he accepted: $30 million. Divided by the number of mass shooting victims so far in 2018, that comes out to $5,800 per victim. “Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?” she asked. “… To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.” The crowd then began to chant, “Shame on you! Shame on you!”
Gonzalez then pointed out the numerous ways that Republican lawmakers have thwarted the gun control laws that might have prevented this tragedy:
- In February of 2017, Trump rolled back a regulation that made it more difficult for those with mental illnesses to purchase a gun
- Congress continues not to act on gun control
“The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us,” Gonzalez continued, “and us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and are prepared to call B.S. … Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats, funded by the NRA, telling us nothing could have ever been done to prevent this. We call B.S.! They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call B.S.! They say that a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call B.S.! They say guns are just tools like knives, and are as dangerous as cars. We call B.S.! They say that no laws could have been able to prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call B.S.!”
From the Senate failing to protect the DREAMers to the House voting to gut the ADA, Congress has well and truly disgusted me this month, and their failure to act on gun control is yet another act of gross negligence. I’m so inspired by Emma Gonzalez’s speech, and so ashamed that we live in a country where she has to give it.
Vote them out.
(via CNN; image: screengrab)
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Published: Feb 17, 2018 04:55 pm