Can Teenagers Solve Our Nation's Most Intractable Problem?

COMMENTARY

Can Teenagers Solve Our Nation's Most Intractable Problem?

Teenagers Advocate for Themselves, and the Country

L. Gregory Lawton, MD

Disclosures

February 23, 2018

Emma Gonzalez gave the speech of her life. The senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School, in Parkland, Florida, was passionate, articulate, and relevant as she addressed a rally in Fort Lauderdale, 3 days after 17 students and teachers were killed by a former student, armed with an AR-15 rifle. She nailed the nuance of the politics and called out the hypocrisy that is the inevitable companion of death when this uniquely American ritual, mass shooting, plays out yet again. Her speech has gone viral.

It was nearly 19 years ago when the world was introduced to the idea that a student could walk into a school with military-style weapons and kill 13 students and teachers. A New York Times [1] article describes the horror. The nation was stunned. Columbine was the paradigm-shifting event, the advent of the awareness of the reality of a mass school shooting.

Two and a half years later, the nation was stunned again, as two airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center's twin towers. 9/11 was the paradigm-shifting event, the advent of the awareness of the reality that an airplane could become a weapon of mass destruction.

We are now living in a world of Transportation Security Administration agents, shoes and belts in screening bins, and shampoo in 100-mL bottles.

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