After the bevy of school shootings in recent months, many young students have made their way to the forefront of conversation relating to gun control, but how and why?
There is a new push for gun reform and the most obvious examples have been the March For Our Lives as well as the plethora of school walkouts that have happened following these senseless tragedies. The marches and walkouts are thought to empower young people politically, yet the average age of people at the March For Our Lives was 49 years old, and most students only walked out to miss class.
All of these movements are marketed to appear as though they are led by kids. As a result, more young people now feel politically empowered. In fact, there has been a 9 percent increase in the number of young people, ages 15 to 34, who believe they can have a moderate effect on politics in this country.
Such a statistic tells us that young people are buying what the mainstream media and the gun control movement are selling. Young people are not aware of the actual players who are pushing the gun control movement forward. They may feel more empowered to make change, but in reality, this feeling is based on an illusion.
The media has focused on young people vying for gun control because they act as a conduit to push forward the media’s political beliefs. This is not to say that the activists do not have anything of substance to say, but rather that the media’s focus on young people as the face of gun control is purposefully done to make conservatives who question the narrative look bad.
Overall, young people are simply missing the point. Putting kids at the front of the gun control movement does not empower other young people. It is simply to use them to forward the media’s beliefs, and to paint conservatives as unfeeling, awful people.
Sadly, young people cannot or choose not to see past the surface, and until that happens, they will continue to be on the wrong side of history.
