President Donald Trump may have already moved on from pushing for stronger gun control but the Parkland students haven’t forgotten the massacre at their Florida high school last year. Now the students who survived the horrific mass shooting have launched a comprehensive new gun control policy described as ‘A Green New Deal, but for guns.’
The official proposal, name ‘The Peace Plan for Safer America’, is a combined effort between students and graduates of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The students hope that the proposal will act as a blueprint for whoever is elected president next year.
The plan has six initiatives, easy to remember by the acronym C.H.A.N.G.E.:
- Change the standards of gun ownership
- Halve the rate of gun deaths in 10 years
- Accountability for the gun lobby and industry
- Name a director of gun violence prevention
- Generate community-based solutions
- Empower the next generation
“Every day in America, more than 100 lives are taken by the deadly epidemic of gun violence. Among young people, gun violence has become a top cause of death, second only to drug overdoses,” reads the March for Our Lives website. “It has many root causes, including hate, poverty, and despair. It’s a deeply intersectional issue, inextricably bound with our long journey for racial justice, economic justice, immigrant rights, and the rights of our LGBTQ allies. And it’s amplified by the societal belief that a gun can solve our problems. Gun violence is destroying our generation. This is simply unacceptable.”
The students also call on the next president to publicly call the gun crisis “a national public health emergency” and acknowledge that “the level of gun violence in the U.S. is unprecedented for a developed nation.”
“If we require a license to drive a car, we should certainly require a license to own a gun.”
“It’s bold. It’s nothing like anyone else is proposing. We are really setting audacious goals. And more than anything, what we are seeking to do is be intersectional,” said Tyah-Amoy Roberts, a Parkland survivor and board member of March for Our Lives.
In addition to the initiatives, the proposal also calls for universal background checks, raising the minimum purchase age for firearms to 21, banning assault rifles, implementing “red flag” laws that allow law enforcement to take firearms from people that have expressed an intention to harm themselves or others, and putting into place a national licensing and registry system.
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