The time has always been "now"

Now is the time. Now is the time, they say. Now is the time, they rant and scream and cry. The hashtag flickers and populates. Retweets upon retweets upon retweets clutter our feeds, our classrooms, our ears and our minds. The phrase, a poignant, reactive umbrella-phrase, galvanizes the feelings of those who feel that “enough is enough”. This simple collection of words gathers so much momentum across thousands of platforms of hurting, angry, passionate people, only to flutter noiselessly to the office floors of those who cause the problem, drowned out either by apathetic neglect or by the static mumbling of meaningless slander. Why was this specific hashtag circulating recently? #Nowisthetime has been trending on Twitter because of the recent school shooting that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The phrase was originally pushed by the Democrats in 2013 after President Obama and Vice President Biden launched a website with the name as this slogan, only slightly longer. They did this in response to the Newtown shooting, which now feels like ages ago, but it’s only been five years since those children, barely older than toddlers, were shot and killed.  The Parkland shooting prompted thousands upon thousands to take to social media and other outlets to express their disgust, sadness, horror, fear and support; so many of them concluded their Instagram, Twitter or Facebook posts with this same hashtag, “#nowisthetime”. Now is the time for what, we ask and wonder. We say this and complain, but what do we mean? Now is the time to “do something about gun violence”, is what Obama and Biden said. What did they expect? What did they want to “do” about gun violence? The answer is not simple, and I sadly do not have the patience to go into it. I do know, however, that this change we so keenly desire relies on our elected leaders and their capacity to put forth and support legislation that makes it harder for such incidents to occur.  To the naked eye, it seems obvious. There should be laws in place that prohibit those who really should not be trusted with a gun from getting a gun. I don’t believe it should be as easy as it is to get a gun, period. I don’t even believe that guns should be available for purchase in regular settings, but unfortunately right now that is beside the point. Due to the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, realistically, we cannot ban guns or regulate them as strictly (and prudently) as many other nations do. The closest we can get is by taking small, legislative steps that make buying and using guns harder. I’m not okay with moving at a snail’s pace on issues like these, but I can certainly accept miniscule change as positive movement, small as it might be.  Thus far in our history, federal “gun control” has come in various forms having to do with background checks and interstate-trade regulation. It seems prudent that lawmakers get on board with the idea of further heightening these regulations, especially since 1999’s Columbine shooting, 2013’s Newtown shooting, and now this. And yet, GOP officials seem to be in a chokehold,  unable to condone the terrorist activity that relates to American gun ownership.  Let’s take a look one such controversial figure: John McCain. In addition to his time in politics, McCain has lived a life of some extremely gruesome hardship; the man was held prisoner and tortured overseas and is now battling cancer, so he is not alien to pain and suffering. Thus, we hope blindly that he publicly condones the Parkland atrocity as it relates to a lack of gun regulation. We hope! Unfortunately, this hope is painfully ignorant.  After news of the shooting, McCain tweeted, “Cindy & I are praying for all those impacted by the senseless shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in #Florida. Our hearts are with the victims, their families, all first responders & the entire Parkland community.”  Senator McCain receives more donations from the National Rifle Association than any other official in congress, clocking in at 7.74 million dollars. The NRA has spent millions supporting other representatives and senators, some of whom are the most powerful officials in the U.S. government, and it’s sickening. The organization has very powerful members of the GOP congress wrapped around its fingers like puppets. It disguises the relationship with words like “contributions” and “donations” when it really means “bribery” and “political gain for gun owners,” and the congress members are essentially trapped.  Another example is Senator Marco Rubio. Many people across the nation watched on Wednesday night as surviving students ripped him apart on the basis of his involvement with the NRA. Survivors and parents asked him not to take money from the organization to his face, and he stood there, helpless, paralyzed by his position, unable to tell these traumatized, hurting kids that he was behind them.  This reluctance and neglect from elected officials on the topic of gun control is evident in the “progress” we have made, and the largest federal reform we have witnessed generally lacks. In true form, the baby steps I mentioned before look like more background checks, limiting sales of automatic firearms, criminalizing guns with low metal content, regulating interstate trade, requiring gun-sellers to have a license, and most recently, a ban on semi-automatic weapons. These steps seem positive, and they are in some ways, but we have to ask ourselves, is this really the direction we are trying to go when we talk about gun control? Or do these regulations allow lawmakers to scoot quietly around the real problems at hand - the problem in which guns are unsettlingly and widely available across the country. Personally, I think it veers toward the latter. And yet, these legislators have no shame in their avoidance of these serious issues. Not to mention, the most potent of those reforms, the ban on semi-automatic or assault weapons that was passed in 1994, expired 10 years ago.  Adults die due to these politicians’ negligence of irresponsible gun policy, and still it is not enough for them. Teenagers die. Children die. Still, it is not enough, and so I ask, ‘When?’ When will they stop seeing gun victims as numbers on a page? When will they stop seeing these deaths and these victims as moving parts of a legislative deal? When will they approach this issue as humans, as fathers, as mothers, as brothers, sisters, and friends, rather than as heartless party machines, bound by meaningless partisan alliances?  There were many aspects of the Parkland shooting that rattled me, but there was one thing in particular that shook me to my core. After the shooter arrived at his former school and was ready to begin the massacre, he pulled a fire alarm. He stood ready with his AR-15, awaiting the students who poured out of classrooms into the halls in reaction to the alarm. Samo has unfortunately been subject to quite a number of false fire alarms - usually just a bored kid deciding that it might be funny to pull the alarm. I do not know the history of this Florida high school, but I can not help but think that there had to have been a few kids who thought annoyedly, as I usually do, Oh, just another kid who pulled the fire alarm, and walked out into that deadly hallway, unaware of their impending fates.  These are kids we are talking about, and I think we tend to forget that. They are high school students, just like us. They go to school every morning around 8 a.m. for the first bell. They are student athletes, musicians, artists, actors, and they are no different than we are. They too have collegiate expectations and dreams and acceptance letters waiting to be read. They have Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter and probably spend too much time staring at their phones. Also, their school isn’t that much different than ours. Those seven out of the 17 that were freshmen could have been seven innocent members of our class of 2021. That history teacher who gave his life for his students could have been one of the beloved members of our history department. That football coach could have been one of our coaches.  It hurts to learn news like this mostly because those kids were closer to us than we know. They were members of our generation. They were our peers. They were our future classmates, future teammates, future co-workers, and future friends. They have been stripped away from our young world, mercilessly plucked from their bright futures.  So, perhaps, now is the time, right? That’s what everyone is saying. But why just now, and not before? When has it really not been “the time” to do something about gun violence? The idea that the issue only obtains significant importance when there is a mass shooting is disgraceful. How many more innocent children have to be slaughtered before it is finally “the time” in the eyes of those who make our country’s executive decisions? The fact alone that we have come to this point as a country is depressing. Yes, sure, the time is now. But that is because the future is now. Our lives are happening now. Regardless of whether or not action has been taken in the past, it only more certainly has to be taken now. Our country has to act with haste. Too many young “now”s have been brutally stolen from our world for us to sit idly and watch one more terror unfold.