deadpresidents:

Because I saw this country simply shrug its shoulders and not demand reform when our elected officials did nothing after 20 innocent first-graders were murdered in their classroom a week-and-a-half before Christmas at Sandy Hook, I’ve believed that we’ll never see meaningful changes. If that couldn’t move elected officials to act and didn’t move Americans to elect different officials who would act, I just couldn’t imagine what would.

However, I am inspired to see the students who survived this latest shooting quickly stand up and take matters into their own hands. I’m not surprised that the Florida legislature basically ignored the hopes of these young people, but I’m hopeful that these kids will use their activism to keep fighting and make those legislators pay at the polls because these students are also their future constituents. I hope that this generation of students across the country reach out to each other, use their mastery of social media, and be the effective activists on this issue that my generation has failed to be. I hope that they are determined and focused enough to achieve what the generations before them were too selfish to see through. They continue to be targets while trying to get an education because Americans before them don’t want to not be able to “hunt” with assault weapons. At BEST that is selfish. And, at this point, it’s downright criminal. But what I’ve seen from these kids over the past few days has given me hope, and that’s far more than I’ve felt after the dozens of other mass shootings that have happened (and quickly been forgotten about if they weren’t ignored in the first place) over the past few years.