Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., will discuss gun reforms as part of a panel at the Harvard Institute of Politics. It will take place shortly before they participate in the pro-gun control “March For Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., on March 24.
The panel, titled “#NEVERAGAIN: How Parkland Students are Changing the Conversation on Guns,” will feature several students who have received extensive media coverage for their attacks on the National Rifle Association and desire to enact strict gun control laws throughout the country.
Among the students scheduled to address the IOP are David Hogg, a senior at MSD who bragged about hanging up on the White House during a phone call in the days following the shooting, as well as Emma Gonzales, also a senior at MSD who has viciously attacked the NRA for giving “blood money” to politicians and “funding the killers.”
“We keep telling them that if they accept this blood money, they are against the children,” said Gonzales, during an appearance on CNN. “You’re either funding the killers, or you’re standing with the children.”
The panel will also feature Cameron Kasky, a junior at MSD who compared Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to the accused Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz because of Rubio’s support for the NRA and the Second Amendment.
“It’s hard to look at you and not look down the barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz,” said Kasky, addressing Rubio directly during a CNN town hall on gun control.
While the Harvard IOP was quick to invite the Parkland students calling for stricter gun laws and bashing the NRA, they chose to ignore survivors like Kyle Kashuv, a Parkland student whose desire to protect students while respecting the Second Amendment has earned him bipartisan praise from politicians across the aisle. However, he has been largely ignored by a number of media outlets.
Meighan Stone, a senior fellow at the Kennedy School’s Women and Foreign Policy program who praised the invited Parkland students as being a “prophetic voice for change,” will moderate the panel.
“The Parkland students have refused to be silent victims,” said Stone, in an email to the Crimson. “Instead realizing they need no one’s permission to be a prophetic voice for change and an end to gun violence in America.”
