Thanks to social media and the enabling mainstream media, the Children’s Crusade Against Gun Rights continues apace. The latest mutation: #ParentsPromiseToKids. If you want to know how this “contract” came to be, newyorker.com is happy to oblige . . .
Last week, in Parkland, Florida, after classes had resumed and news trucks had left, two sixteen-year-old juniors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School sat at a dining-room table, in a gated community, trying to launch a movement. Adam Buchwald, stroking a precocious five-o’clock shadow, pitched a visitor. “We want parents to sign a contract,” he said, “promising their kids that they’ll vote for leaders who put kids’ safety over guns.”
The contract concept had occurred to Adam and his friend Zach Hibshman—who each knew two of the fourteen students killed at their school—in the Buchwalds’ den, where they’d been hunkering down since the shooting.
“Last Friday, we were just, like, ‘Let’s change the world,’ ” Zach, who was wearing gym clothes, said.
“Our classmates marched in Tallahassee, which we think is great,” Adam went on, referring to the #NeverAgain movement. “But our movement will make a major change in future elections.”
The #ParentsPromiseToKids movement upends the usual parent – child dynamic. More than that, it depends on the existence of parents who are as unfamiliar with rational thinking as their children. A fair assumption I’d say.
What’s your promise to your children? Do you promise to vote your guns? If so, why?