Parkland School Shooting Fueled Big Shift in America’s Gun Politics

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School participate in an end of school year peace march and rally on June 15, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. (Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images) Last year’s shooting at a Florida high school[1] sparked a movement among a younger generation angered by gun violence and set the stage for a significant shift in America’s gun politics. Thousands of student protesters took to the streets and inspired hashtags such as #NeverAgain and #Enough. They also mobilized to register a new generation of voters. Candidates were emboldened too. Many of them confronted the issue in the midterm elections and were rewarded with victory over incumbents supported by the National Rifle Association. That helped Democrats take back control of the House. As the one-year anniversary of the shooting approaches, the legacy of the massacre remains an ever-present force in the nation’s politics and gun laws. “What we’ve seen here is a tectonic shift in our politics on the guns issue,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords, the gun violence prevention group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. These people “didn’t get elected despite their advocacy for safer gun laws. They got elected because of their advocacy for safer gun laws. They made that a core part of their message to the American people.” The political landscape began to change just days after a former student shot and killed 17 students and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. At the state level, a surge of gun-control measures were enacted, including increasing the minimum age for purchasing a firearm and requiring waiting periods. The number of states with so-called “red flag” laws — which allow temporary confiscation of weapons from people deemed a safety risk — doubled. At the federal level, for the first time in modern history, gun-control groups outspent the powerful NRA

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