Lucy Han

Professor Dilip Gaonkar

COMM-ST 294-0

11 December 2020

March for Our Lives: The Voice of the New Generation

On February 14th, 2018, a 19 years-old gunman Nikolas Cruz pulled his firearm

indiscriminately towards students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in

Parkland, Florida, inflicting 17 deaths and another 17 injuries. After six minutes and 20 seconds

of firing, he escaped from the scene by blending with the crowd of students and teachers. He was

later arrested by the police in a nearby city, the city of Coral Springs.1 This incident is verified to

be the most lethal high school shooting that had ever happened in United States history.2 It

shocked citizens, and more ruthlessly, traumatized children and their families who were once

again shrouded in fear and grievance.

The struggle against gun violence never vanished. It was long before the Parkland

shooting, that people grieved when Dylan Roof killed nine people at the church in South

Carolina, mourned when Stephen Paddock killed sixty people in Las Vegas and raged when

Adam Lanza killed 26 people in Sandy Hook elementary school.3 However, effective actions

were never taken by the states and governments to root out gun violence. On the contrary, mass

1 Wikipedia contributors, Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting (Wikipedia)

2 Wikipedia contributors, List of school shootings in the United States by death toll (Wikipedia)
3 Wikipedia contributors, Mass shootings in the United States (Wikipedia)
shootings were becoming increasingly common throughout the nation and their frequency had

even tripled since 2011, as stated by Mother Jones’s analysis on Harvard research.4

Parkland shooting happened to become the initiating event that triggered the agitation of

the survivors. Rather than expecting thoughts and prayers or vacant rhetoric from politicians, the

survivors of the Parkland shooting channeled their sorrow and outrage into actions. These

teenagers, becoming one of the most prominent proponents of gun control, birthed something

genuinely novel and unforeseen in American history—the spearheading of the March for Our

Lives (MFOL) movement. The MFOL team stated on their official website that the core mission

of their movement was “to harness the power of young people across the country to fight for

sensible gun violence prevention policies that save lives,” as well as increasing school security

and mental health funding. During the days following the incident, students and alumni of

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gathered and established the Never Again Marjory

Stoneman Douglas (Never Again MSD), a political action committee for advocating gun control

regulations, and used the hashtag, #NeverAgain, as their political campaign.5

Leadership Organization

MFOL is entirely youth-led and it contains more than 300 chapters worldwide, with a

central figure of the 28 founders--the Parkland shooting survivors. Due to such scale, the

leadership of MFOL is formal and decentralized, as the central figure could be easily identified,

and their power is distributed to the subordinate chapters spread across the world. Followed by

the founders, groups of board members, youth congress, and headquarters are in the next lead.

The board members and headquarters consist of mostly adults, where they would help the

4 Amy Cohen et al., Rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011, new research from Harvard shows (Mother
Jones)
5 Wikipedia contributors, March for Our Lives (Wikipedia)
student leaders to evaluate important decisions and provide them with advice through their past

experiences. The youth congress is a group of enthusiastic and exceptional student activists

around the country who have been recruited by the MFOL team. The youth congress members

are responsible for advising the strategies and directions of the movement and lead dedicated

committees to address diverse missions to separate teams and departments. Then, the

organization is branched off into the policy team, the organizing team, and the out-reach team,

which separately associates with different areas of demand.6 Decentralized in another way,

MFOL allows potential student activists to call for a town hall in partnership with the MFOL

team or create a working group in their own community to form coalitions and take action at

local levels. All members of the teams were made sure to be completely youth-led so that the

power of the youth generation could be used to address advocacy. Whereas information and

resources were all delivered and exchanged mostly through social media platforms, it happened

to progress an efficient communication between the leaders, traditional media, and potential

participants of the movement, creating remarkable solidarity and dynamic within the online

community.

Tactics

Practical strategies were held by the MFOL team. One among many, the event of

“Enough! National School Walkout” was organized exactly after one month of the Parkland

shooting. On the day of the event, one million students from nearly three thousand schools across

America walked out of the classroom for 17 minutes, one for each victim of the mass shooting in

Parkland. Afterward, the MFOL movement grew out from the Never Again MSD, sparking

global outrage over partisans of gun possessions in the United States. Eventually, the coalescing

6 https://marchforourlives.com/leadership/
moment took place as a mass demonstration and rally in Washington D.C. on March 24th, 2018.

On the day of the movement gathered 500,000 people attending the march with more than 800

sibling movements held globally, being the largest youth-led protest against gun violence in

history. Even after the mass protest, the student activists did not cease their way in promoting

changes. They are leading a youth voter registration named “Road to Change”, visiting survivors

of other gun violence incidences who are in over 24 different states.

Another strategy they employed was holding a massive boycott against their opponent

and their chief addressee, the gun rights advocacy group National Rifle Association (NRA). The

response of the NRA towards MFOL including recommending teachers to get armed was

criticized by people and led to a significant upsurge of the backlash against the NRA. However,

the NRA has nearly 5.5 million members who in-together defend the Second Amendment rights.7

Since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, the hashtags of #BoycottNRA appeared on social

media; however, it quickly faded after failing to promote actual changes. After the Parkland

shooting, there began a surge of mentions on #BoycottNRA.8 What actually broke out the

vagueness of the hashtag was until the First National Bank of Omaha declared on media

platforms that they had cut ties with the NRA. The proponents of gun control, then, began to

pressure other companies to follow the bank’s lead and to issue a termination of cooperation and

partnership with the NRA. Consequently, large companies such as United Airlines or Best

western followed the same action to respond, and the hashtag of #BoycottNRA went viral over

social media.9 Additionally, an agenda statement, the Peace Plan, was created on their official

website, asserting that it is “created by the survivors, so you don’t have to be one”, which vowed

the longings of the student activists that no one should ever experience what they had gone

7 Wikipedia contributors, National Rifle Association (Wikipedia)

8 Wikipedia contributors, 2018 NRA Boycott (Wikipedia)
9 Tiffany Hsu, Big and Small, N.R.A. Boycott Efforts Come Together in Gun Debate (New York Times, 2018)
through not long ago. The Peace Plan is an agenda for the MFOL team and their supporters to

keep urging the next Presidential Administration and Congress to take action to address this

nation-wide gun violence issue. This plan includes demands to raise the standard for national gun

ownership, to require an urgent federal response, and to justify the gun lobby by requiring real

accountability for the gun industry.10 Due to such scale of the movement and the powerful spread

of media pressure towards government officials and related organizations, this generation with

powerful leadership and a strong will of ending gun violence in America is blazing their way in

achieving their missions and demands.

Media Strategy

One of the challenges faced by the student activists was that they were seeking extensive

media coverage across the world so that they could draw an unprecedented level of attention to

gun violence in order to actually create a far-reaching impact on gun control debates. Taking the

Women’s March as a model, two of the founders, Brendan Duff and Sofie Whitney, began to

launch multiple social media accounts on different platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, and

Snapchat, etc., becoming a “liaison” between the media and their team.11 Past protests failed to

create a far-reaching influence on social media; however, since February 14th and up to March

30th, the hits and posts of the MFOL movement reached over 11.6 million, and the hashtag of

#MarchForOurLives was tweeted and mentioned nearly 4 million times on Twitter, exceeding

the hits of all past protests relating to gun violence within such a short period of time. Even way

before the MFOL mass demonstration, the event of “Enough! National School Walkout” on

March 14th generated a total of 1.3 million social media posts.12 It is evident that the social

10 https://marchforourlives.com/peace-plan/
11 Sofie Whitney and Brendan Duff, Glimmer of Hope (Penguin Books Ltd., 2018, p.29-40)
12 Olivia Deng, March for Our Lives Was Born on Social Media (Brandwatch, 2018)
media they were operating are more than capable of disseminating information, as well as

inspiring and arousing survivors of past gun violence, fueling their negligible idea into a mass

demonstration. By creating social media accounts and their own websites of MFOL,

unambiguous statements and transparent information were conveyed to participants and citizens;

and by mobilizing active participants from across the nation, effective communication is

achieved. Even though actions were initiated on social media, the ability of the student activists

to be remarkably articulate has also captured the minds of many throughout the country and

thereby receiving funds and supports from powerful business leaders, liberal media, celebrities,

and many others.

Civil Society Associates

The success of MFOL could not be achieved without collaboration with their civil society

partners, including Non-profit Organizations. Everytown for Gun Safety, so-called the Mayors

Against Illegal Guns, is an NGO largely financed by Michael Bloomberg that advocates for gun

control.13 Everytown, working with some influential Mayors, has created a student’s wing of

Student Demand Action that is in partnership with MFOL, where they have more than 33000

student leaders and activists being recruited and joining this community every week in the days

following the mass demonstration of MFOL. Everytown initiated a $1 Million Grant Program to

stimulate an acceleration of the burgeoning growth of MFOL, dedicating as an additional

resource for students to expand the chapters of Student Demand Change and spread their voices

to a broader audience. Moreover, they have provided an Action Plan, which is to provide

concrete tools for student activists to “organize vote registration drives.” They have also

provided opportunities for students to participate in more than 200 events that took place in local

13 Wikipedia contributors, Everytown for Gun Safety (Wikipedia)

communities, where they could discuss their plans following the mass demonstration, educating

citizens about gun violence and the importance of gun control, as well as making local electoral

plans. Students also have the opportunity to join legislative meetings with Senates or with federal

and state policymakers. With the grant of $5000, Student Demand Actions also helped MFOL to

plan sibling marches in student leaders’ local communities. Additionally, Moms Demand Action

is a gun control advocacy group following the Sandy Hook shooting that is also under the

support of Everytown. Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, supported MFOL

by saying that: “students across America are committed to changing America’s culture of gun

violence, and we plan to support them all the way — and that includes throwing out lawmakers

who refuse to work to reduce gun violence in our schools and communities.”14 They were also

scheduled to speak on the day of the direct action movement of MFOL. The National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) also supports MFOL as the

“largest nonpartisan civil rights organization” in America. NAACP had 1000 of its students to

attend the mass demonstration and promised to register more young people to vote. NAACP is

also in great support of the Road to Change tour, as it is a great opportunity for getting the young

Black people mobilized, and the students of the organization will join hands with MFOL and

travel across America to educated and motivated to vote. These organizations coordinate

advocacy efforts with MFOL, aiming to push meaningful legislation changes with the support of

younger generations.15

Resource Mobilization: Business, Corporations, and Celebrity Involvement

14 Gaby Loewenstein, Everytown Continues to Support Student Organizers Following March for Our Lives
(momsdemandaction.org, 2018)
15 Rachel Johnson, NAACP and March for Our Lives Team for National Voter Registration Campaign (naccp.org,
2018)
 Sticking to the organizational framework, MFOL had also succeeded by actively

mobilizing their resources for their team. Aside from NGOs, there are also businesses and

corporations that align with MFOL, hoping to build on the momentum of MFOL as well as

reflecting their brands’ value. The luxury brand Gucci was among the first brand to partner with

MFOL and Everytown and donated a total of $500,000 to the MFOL rally.16 In addition, to fuel

demonstrators during the march, food company ThinkGoodFood and Eatwell gave free bagged

lunches to student activists under 18; to encourage participation, Lyft provided free rides to

around 50 rallies for those who RSVP; to spread awareness, a group of Viacom networks

provided a live cast for the event. Those support from these companies are just the tip of the

iceberg, and many other businesses also contributed massively to MFOL in different possible

ways.

Similarly, celebrities such as singer Taylor Swift or actor George Clooney have provided

massive support by posting influential and inspiring words and talks on social media, prompting

the spread of information and empathy, and encouraging more people to participate in this

movement. From crowdfunding and donations from celebrities, up to 40000 donations were

made to the GoFundMe campaign that was started by the Never Again MSD, with a number of

highest single donations from celebrities of $500,000.17 Not only did the celebrities pledged

donations to MFOL, but many of them also attended the mass demonstration on March 24th. The

MFOL movement in Washington D.C. cost nearly half of the donations, and the remaining

donations were left for lobbying and pushing for stricter gun laws through “the Peace Plan” and

the “Road for Change”.18 The efficacy of this student body embodied a powerful image of the

16 Sophie Komornicki, Business Aligning with Gen Z to Support March for Our Lives (Cone Communications,
2018)
17 Ariella Phillips, Celebrities and Cash Pour Into ‘March for Our Lives’ Protest (Philanthropy, 2018)
18 Sam Hoisington, 'March for Our Lives' Cost $5 Million; 'Several Million' Left for Lobbying (npr.org, 2018)
younger generation, and their competence in stepping in and putting more voices into the

political field was once again emphasized. Despite their possible immaturity of political

recognition and engagement that is associated with their ages, they have “leveraged narratives of

age and generation to inspire others to take action on preventing gun violence incidences across

the United States.”19

Political Receptions

Media and politicians’ reactions toward the MFOL movement polarizes. Liberals were

more impressed by the energy and potential that the student activists had displayed, and they

labeled MFOL as “one of the most disciplined and integrated marches ever.”20 The White House

spokesperson Lindsey Walters responded to the mass demonstration of MFOL by saying that

“we applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights

today.” The Trump Administration also had issued a plan of banning bump stock.21

Whereas most media of the left-wing and Democratic politicians enthusiastically embrace

and praise this movement, the conservatives and Republicans had a dismissive reaction towards

the student activists, asserting that they were too young to know what they were doing. Former

Senator Rick Santorum responded:

“How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something

about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent

shooter that you can actually respond to that.”

19 Emily Bent, Unfiltered and Unapologetic: March for Our Lives and the Political Boundaries of Age (Jeunesse:
Young People, Texts, Cultures, Academia, 2019)
20 William Cummings, The Bubble: March for Our Lives protesters dismissed by conservatives (USA Today, 2018)
21 Benjamin Hart, Politicians React to March for Our Lives (Nymag, 2018)
In his claim, instead of violating other citizen’s rights to hold guns, students should be

responsible for learning first aid. His point of view is similar to those of NRA, or any other

conservatives, in which they suggested that teachers should get armed at school, thus

circumnavigating the root problem of mass shootings, as identified by the student activists. Other

criticisms including theories of the conspiracy were also popular among conservatives.22 They

insisted that the Parkland shooting incident was intentionally manipulated by Democrats, and the

survivors of this shooting were alleged to be the “crisis actors” of this play. Similarly, right-wing

media such as Fox News had its host Laura Ingraham mocking the activist David Hogg, who

appeared to be a frequent target of conservatives and right-wing media, for receiving rejections

from college applications. Hogg responded by listing a number of major advertisers who support

Laura Ingraham and encouraging them to remove their advertisements from her show.23 Though

the conspiracy theories and Laura Ingraham’s statement were largely scorned by people, and the

survivors did stand up and clarified facts, conservatives were still less moved by this

demonstration. To the conservatives, even a non-violent direct action could be somehow

mentally and physically disruptive. In an article of Townhall, columnist Kevin McCullough

furiously expressed his fling towards MFOL by beginning with “it was more irritating than

anything else,” criticizing the student activists as “angry and opportunistic”, “media-hyped

know-nothings” who “should be doing homework instead of being treated like Nobel nominees.”

In support of the conspiracy theory and an extreme approach to the march against gun rights, he

depicted MFOL as an extraordinarily disruptive and hypocritical tool, where the political left and

leftist media “use them to advance their socialist utopia ideals.”24 He argued that while the

22 Alex Bollinger, Conservatives respond to the March for Our Lives... by mocking gun victims (LGBTQ Nation,
2018)
23 Michelle Mark, Fox News host apologizes for mocking a Parkland shooting survivor's grades as companies
yank their ads from her show (Business Insider, 2018)
24 Kevin McCullough, The Stupidity of the 'March for Our Lives' (Townhall, 2018)
student activists have no right to turn their frustration into the abolishment of the Second

Amendment, they were failing to see that their dissatisfaction does not mean that gun possession

is illegitimate or unconstitutional. Jack Beyrer in his critique commented that though inclusive

political activism is a great appeal to American democracy, “inclusivity means accepting ideas

that might be hard to swallow or necessary to engage”, and that “the March for Our Lives is in

no way the inclusive liberal bastion it has fashioned itself to be.”25 Indeed, a rather impulsive

activist like David Hogg might generate expressions or reactions that are somehow radical or

unthoughtful; however, media commenters should never neglect the fact that the student activists

have never deviated from their original intention and mission.

Results and Effectiveness of MFOL: Successes and Failures in Short Run and Long Run

Making references to past gun violence protests, MFOL seemed to be exceptional in their

performance. Professor David S. Meyer of the University of California, Irving in his article

published in the Washington Post enumerated three indicators of success for direct action and

provided reasons for why past gun control protests failed. First of all, past effective movements

took much longer, and was much more sustained in their own grounds, whereas modern protests

usually don’t. Secondly, successful movements, believed by Meyer, tend to be “opportunistic,

inclusive and persistent.” A strong coalition has to be built while seizing the opportunity to take

action and convince the crowd when they have the will to draw attention and hold empathy

towards the matter. Thirdly, Meyer claimed that federalism, as a major institutional barrier to

revolutionaries, complicates the path for revolutionaries to change. His argument stands on the

fact that different levels of government could perplex the responsibility of each, where cities,

states, and the national government had different opinions towards activists. Different

25 Jack Beyrer, The Problem with March for Our Lives (Wake Forest Review, 2018)
institutions would then shift responsibilities to each other without drawing a conclusion of what

kind of action is needed, resulting in a stalemate where “activists face a kind of shell game when

looking for meaningful targets.” Similarly, the electoral system in the US could hinder the

efficacy of movements, as the activists have to maintain and persist in their arguments

throughout the staggered electoral cycles to win the majority.26

Meanwhile, as the three factors proposed by Meyer are considered to be essential for a

successful movement, many of the revolutionaries encounter those challenges, whether they have

failed to retain the attention of those emotionally susceptive supporters whose standpoints were

mainly driven by temporary impulse. Facing all the unstable political factors that the activists are

unable to alter, taking Meyer’s quotes, it might be true that “stalemate is sometimes the best

outcome — and to advocates, it may not feel like victory.” However, Meyer had, on the other

hand, affirmed the successes of the MFOL movement, as they managed to stack up all three

challenges. The student activists had indeed captured the immediate opportunity and took action

in response to the mass shooting, and even if the mass demonstration ended and the media

spotlight shifted, they were still promoting their missions and demands by publishing narrative

books and organizing boycotts or the National Walkout Day. Moreover, it is widely recognized

by people that MFOL has such youth political legibility that it intersects identities across

different gender, race, and class, building it into a movement by a coalition that is “reflective of

the diverse communities impacted by the epidemic of gun violence.27 Most importantly, the

Never Again MSD was “strategizing for the long term” by joining a coalition with similar

movements like Moms Demand Action. By accurately identifying their opponent as the NRA,

they have planned a clear agenda and strategies to pressure and threaten them and their related
26 David S. Meyer, One year after the Parkland shooting, is the #NeverAgain movement on track to succeed? (The
Washington Post, 2019)
27 Emily Bent, Unfiltered and Unapologetic: March for Our Lives and the Political Boundaries of Age (Jeunesse:
Young People, Texts, Cultures, Academia, 2019)
business partners. One of the recognizable achievements of the MFOL movement was that they

have prompted 67 new gun control laws as well as a ban on bump stocks, credited with supports

from children of intersectional backgrounds as well as Democratic politicians.28 Regardless of

actual changes being made by MFOL, the movement successfully recaptured the public’s

attention on gun violence and the Second Amendment controversies.

Obstacles of Gun Control Advocacies

If we look down to the result of MFOL from a macroscopical view, we could still

recognize a large group of staggerers who eventually chose to support gun rights, adding the

clout needed for gun rights advocacies to push backward gun control legislations. The underlying

reason for this might be explained by the Cultivation Theory. Andy Ruddock (2020) applied the

Cultivation Theory and its byproduct, the Mean World Syndrome, into the media relations with

MFOL and other mass shootings. The concept of the Mean World Syndrome was proposed by

Dr. George Gerbner, a communications theorist that contributed largely to researches regarding

media violence and its effect to cultivate fear on audiences of mass media, arguing that “TV

violence prompted fear and suspicion.”29 The Cultivation Theory introduces that TV, acting as an

ideological tool, had a possible effect of assimilating the values of audiences with the mass

media. Ruddock summarized that “media scared audiences by telling them what to fear and

providing languages to express that feeling.” As the audiences could get in touch with distant

violent content shown on the TV, it becomes possible that the ideology expressed by the content

could exert imperceptible an unobtrusive influences on audiences, magnifying fear and thus

affecting their subjective judgments towards the degree of insecurity and the hazard level of the

28 Michael Tesler, One year later, public support for stricter gun laws has returned to pre-Parkland levels (The
Washington Post, 2019)
29 Wikipedia contributors, George Gerbner (Wikipedia)
authentic social atmosphere.30 Nowadays, the cultivation theory was more likely to be

intrinsically utilized by the mass media’s methodology of storytelling with cynicism, which has a

tendency of becoming way more politically focused. Thereby, audiences of mass media who

receive such information would lean towards accepting violence as a norm that could shape how

they live and react. Its implication is that we buy guns to protect ourselves from and support the

party in the name of keeping us safe.

The most imminent and nonnegligible challenge for MFOL is the NRA. The power of the

NRA and its political function formed a bilateral interaction with the government and the

Republican Party, acting as a gun lobby interest group that exerts pressure and obstacles in gun

control advocacies. The objective of the NRA is to preserve the Second Amendment and the

interests of its members, and its starting point is to establish political relationships with the

government and members of the Congress, standing on their ultimate goal of creating conditions

for them to enforce actual laws and policies on gun rights. They are powerful because they are

able to hire powerful lobbyists, former government officials, and lawmakers to strengthen their

efforts, and also have former US presidents and influential journalists and actors as their

members, reaching a total of 5.5 million members in 2018.31 Closely affiliated with the

Republican Party, the NRA has a strong political background and it receives its finance from

membership dues, fundraising, sales, and advertisements, thus receiving money that could be

used on elections, running their advertisements, and trying to influence the public on the

importance of gun rights as well as the popular votes.32 That being said, if a presidential

candidate expressed their opposition against the NRA, they might be disadvantaged in his or her

30 Andy Ruddock, Chapter 2. School Shootings: The Mean World Syndrome (Digital Influence, Academia, 2020)
31 Wikipedia contributors, National Rifle Association (Wikipedia)
32 Sam Musa The Impact of NRA on the American Policy (Journal of Political Sciences & Public Affairs, vol.04,
no. 04, 2016)
votes. As a result, regardless of whether MFOL succeeded or not, it only has a limited possibility

to shake the current status of the NRA, as well as solving the perennial problem of gun control.

According to estimations, there are 330 million guns in America, making “America, per

capita, the largest privately-owned gun-toting country in the world.”33 That being said, any new

gun control measure in this gun-flooded country is already against reality. Australia, in turn, had

implemented a mandatory buyback of 600,000 long guns after the 1996 mass shooting. This act

effectively halved gun deaths and mass shooting accidents in Australia. An essential reason why

America had difficulties in adopting a similar resolution, is that gun possession problems

involves complicated tangling of the polarized political parties and partisanships, where one

would not be willing to compromise the other. Potent gun lobbies had also emerged from the

debates regarding gun controls, holding the opinion that while mass shootings and gun violence

are horrifying, they only represent a silver of total deaths.34 Joe Bonadio in his blog criticized

media-induced violence, agreeing to this statement and applying the Mean World Syndrome by

saying that:

“Gun violence is an epidemic in the US, and fear is the fuel behind this epidemic. Fear is

used to sell a lot of things in this country: politicians use it to shoehorn themselves into office;

news anchors use it to pump up their ratings and sell soap for their sponsors. The gun lobby takes

advantage of all this fear-mongering to convince us that we need more and better guns, to defend

us against the malevolent world beyond our front doors. But to what extent are we misled about

the dangers we face in modern America?”35

33 Ashraf Esmail et al., Mass Shootings and Misogyny: Broken Males are Pulling the Trigger (Academia, 2019)
34 Tom McCarthy, A perennial American question: why has gun control failed? (The Guardian, 2019)
35 Bonadio Orlando, Assault Weapons And The Mean World Syndrome (Joe Content, 2016)
Indeed, different attitudes and ideologies towards gun control expanded this disagreement, and

while the majority of US citizens still reckon guns as “essential” to their freedom, this makes it

harder for gun control advocators to alter the public demand.

But the next concern is that what could be the future of MFOL? The challenge for MFOL

or other gun control advocacy groups is that the boycott of the NRA is very likely to fade away.

It is one of the most powerful gun-rights groups that benefit the manufacturers and gun

hobbyists, then, it was in turn, supported and financed by them. With this powerful background

of NRA, they are much likely to revive its power and credibility from their business partners. On

the other hand, research conducted by Michael Tesler shows that “by the end of 2018, public

support for stricter gun laws had returned to pre-Parkland levels,” according to the Gallup and

Civiqs surveys. Linking with the notable theory of Public Opinion, which argues that “people

express opinions based on easily accessible information,”36 it becomes more disadvantaged for

gun control advocates to fight for a change with uncertainty in satisfying their appeal.

I partly agree with David Meyer’s statement in evaluating the success of MFOL.

However, though he accurately pointed out their contributions to gun control legislation,

revolutions are not likely to happen because of this direct action. Admittedly, MFOL is

successful as a direct action movement in its short run effort. It is quite obvious that MFOL is far

more influential than past gun control direct actions, depending on the fact that they have pushed

new laws and captured new voices of the younger generation to stand on the opposite side of gun

rights advocacy groups. Their future is also promising with a systematic agenda being created by

the team, such as the Peace Plan and the Road to Change. However, they might also face a lot of

existing or potential resistances and obstacles that stop them from succeeding in the long run that

might force them to step into complicated political fields that they might be unfamiliar with. As

36 Wikipedia contributors, Public Opinion (Wikipedia)

pointed out by The Underground, a Penn State news, “there is only the trenchant continuation of

political grandstanding.” It is true that all Americans, even the NRA, want to prevent mass

shootings, it is just that there are no proper and realistic policies to achieve this shared goal.37

Therefore, it is hard to judge whether MFOL succeeded or not. Personally speaking, as direct

action, it has succeeded; but as a revolution, though we could not bluntly say that it failed, facing

political challenges and obstacles, it still has a long way to progress. Whether MFOL would be

neglected and become oblivion just as other actions did, remains unknown, as such imaginary

utopia is still distant from what we are now. It may be too utter to believe that the student

activists are “the future of America,” but just as what Cameron Kasky has written on his Twitter,

MFOL and the fight against gun violence “is a marathon, not a sprint. And the safety of the

American people will come in first.”

37 Kiran Pandey, Pandey: The failure of March for Our Lives (The Underground, 2018)
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