Is the March For Our Lives movement unstoppable?

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This OP is not a gun rights/gun control debate. I can not add anything that has been not been said endless times here and elsewhere. It is more where the movement is and where it might go analytical piece. Success and failure for this post is defined as meeting or not meeting the goals of the movement, not whether it ends up being for the public good or not.

The high school student led gun control movement seems to be in a “resistance is futile” to it situation. In just a month they got hundreds of thousands of students to walk out and even more to participate in the “March for Our Lives” protest in more than 800 locations. They got some major companies to change gun sales policies and some Republicans to propose gun control legislation, they got President Trump to undo a long-standing Justice Department policy against banning bump stocks.

The “March For Our Lives” protest was pulled off brilliantly. Not only Parkland survivors but Columbine survivors spoke. They answered the white middle-class elitist charge by having speakers from inner-city black organizations. They answered we want to take away all your guns away charge by having organizer David Hogg say he has guns in his home for protection. Hell, they even had Sir Paul McCartney speaking at the NYC demo noting he had a close friend(John Lennon) killed a few blocks away. They are at a place that most more veteran political activists could only envy successfully framing the debate as “You can’t argue with this”. Even the NRA which has fought off many you can’t argue with this moments seem flummoxed saying “Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.” If it is possible to make mass shooting survivors seem even more sympathetic, they did it. Hogg warned politicians opposing their movement they better get their resumes ready. He is too modest. At this moment it seems more like be prepared to be seen as modern-day Neville Chamberlin’s, enablers and appeasers of mass murder.

I am old enough to remember a somewhat similar you can not argue with this moment in 1970 when national guardsmen killed 4 students and injured 13 at Kent State University. Some people struck by bullets were not even protesters but bystanders and people walking from one class to another. A nationwide student strike ensued involving over 400 universities and high schools. When the students from Kent and universities in general, went home they expected sympathy, after all, it could have been their sons and daughters killed by National Guardsmen, instead they often got something along the lines of “They should have killed them all” or “They must have done something to deserve it”. I remember hearing such talk myself. A Gallup Poll at the time showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard and 31 percent expressed no opinion for the shootings. Two years later Nixon in what was largely a referendum on the counterculture and anti-war movement won in a massive landslide. The backlash was derailed by Watergate but resumed for the “Reagan Revolution”. There are many important differences between Kent State and March for Our Lives. The older generation then had grown up during the “good war” where you served no questions asked. To them protesting an ongoing war was treason. The protesters at Kent State unlike the March For Our Lives people were scruffy college students, the demo was violent with some protesters throwing rocks and bodily fluids at the National Guard, two nights earlier the Reserves Officers Training Corps building had been burned to the ground. But that moment almost 5 decades ago does provide a caution not to assume based on the emotion of the moment.

As I mentioned in another thread a lot the debate is about matters settled legally for the foreseeable future. Those saying the second amendment prohibits any gun owners outside of a militia may or may not be correct but in DC vs Heller SCOTUS has ruled otherwise. With Trump probably picking some more justices this is not going to change. Those gun rights people who cite DC vs Heller forget the part where they ruled regulation of gun sales is constitutional.

Any political movement is subject to a number of things that can limit its effectiveness over time. It is impossible to keep this level of emotional intensity forever. The gun rights people may very well regain their equilibrium. The movement can lose focus splitting into factions. The organizers seem level headed and well aware of these traps. The next steps to keep the movement engaged and focused are already planned out, another walkout and voter registration. But this movement has had arguably the most amount of success in the quickest amount of time in history. That can make even the most veteran activists overconfident, never mind high school kids. Overconfidence can manifest itself by doing the same thing over and over again thus losing effectiveness, that cockiness can come off as arrogance alienating people. When the barriers do not break down just because it seems obvious that they should that can lead to people giving up or lashing out violently. A hint of possible trouble comes in the less talked about signals of ageism with this movement. Even if people agree with this on some level adults rarely like to be told by children you f****d up bad, now agree with us or we are going inelegantly put you in the ash heap of history and there is nothing you can do about it. All of those things eventually hurt badly the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements.

The above does not mean the March For Our Lives movement is doomed to fall flat on its face. Politically a lot of the 60’s counterculture failed, but culturally they succeeded, Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll have been mainstream ever since and opponents have not been able to do much about it but complain. Tobacco smoking has been heavily shamed to the sidelines of public life with the agreement of most of the public. But the above means the movement could fall flat on its face despite the “resistance is futile” feel of the moment

I don’t think “resisting” those huge and most likely unarmed crowds with a few machine guns and a good stock of ammo would be very futile. Cruel? Yeah. Cowardly? Sure. But hardly futile.

To pick up on a few points (NB: Apply a liberal sprinkling of "IMHO"s):

- Most facets of the 60/70's counter-culture which succeeded did so largely because they could be monetised. The corporate world woke up to the fact that loosening social mores so that people could be "individuals" (or at least pretend to be) to whom you could sell "individualised" products at a premium, would make them a lot of money. Just look at how many advertising campaigns incorporate all of the hippies' favourite words like "freedom" and "individual" despite promoting purely practical, identical, mass-produced products. Sadly, that is by far the hippies' most pervasive legacy.

- A higher proportion of the World War Two generation were consistently against the Vietnam war than the "flower power" generation ever were (which makes sense - those that fought in WWII had seen the true horror of combat and their families had to live with the after effects of this.) They may not have protested directly out of a sense of patriotism and solidarity with the armed forces, but the older generation were the ones who ultimately brought about the US withdrawal. This is the inverse of the current situation regarding gun control (even assuming that the protesters are representative of their generation as a whole.)

- Most of the young people on these recent demonstrations will, over the next few years, be wanting a job, a house, probably marriage and kids. They are not going to be "radical" for very long once they are old enough for their involvement in direct-action politics to interfere with employment and family responsibilities. I doubt that there has ever been a generation where that was ever any different. The "powers that be" don't need to fight back too hard, they just need to make a few ineffectual concessions and bide their time.

Cynical? Yes. A reason not to try? Of course not. Do I hope that I'm wrong? Emphatically, YES!
I do think some good may come of it; even if just to encourage a new generation to look at politics in a new light. But a paradigm shift? With much regret, I doubt it.

I wonder how many people actually can’t wait to have their own direct experience with that whole cool World War thing.

These people were paid and all their transportation paid for too as well as living accommodations by two billionaires who hate guns and freedom. They don’t even know why they’re marching, what laws they want or how the laws being proposed work or do.

I’ll post the interview video here later.
It’s ignorant and blindly following what they told. It’s sad this is how the Nazis came into power people just blindly followed them.

For the sake of common sense and simple decency, we should all hope that it truly is unstoppable. Maybe - just maybe - people over there are finally starting to see the blindingly obvious connection between the availability and omnipresence of guns, and the tendency of many unhinged individuals within society to use them for their only, and intended, purpose - to kill.

You’re naive if you hi I a few teenagers formed a political organization, raise millions alone, and organized a nations movement alone in few weeks, I don’t even think they can legally form a organization as their minors. We already know cnn wrot scripts for the survivors. That Hogg kid is horrible. Very Nazi like. Nazi lik arm bans, Nazi like hand gestures, wanting to strip those he hates rights away, saying he just needs to take our democracy (we aren’t a democracy) from us as we are too stupid to know how to use it etc. he’s super disrespectful too.

FYI th video I’m sure non of you will watch shows a lot of the people protesting don’t know anything baiting what they’re protesting about or what they want. They just mindlessly following marching orders and repeating lies. Gun owners at evil and behind everything , just like the Jews were according to hitler.
Excuse me while I go attend the top secret gun owners control th world where we will discuss future mass murder plans, oh how we love making it so people try to stir our rights. If the nra and fun ownes were really so in control why is gun control passed? What possible reason would we gun ownwrs(like we some united front lol) habe for dong mass shootings? No I’m not responsible for the shootings. No non of their proposed Trannical proposals would stop mass shootings.