Opinion: Our generation has the power
March 9, 2018
For the generation of today that is plagued by sprays of rapid-fire gun violence: it is our time to strike.
Ever since I’ve been in school, this country has lived from one campus atrocity to another. When time goes by and there hasn’t been a school shooting for months, it feels like a serpent coiled back waiting to strike.
But what happens when it finally strikes in your own backyard? Why is there this impending feeling of doom as each state gets its personal gunshot wound? Is that when a change will be made?
To the older generation, the answer is yes. There are still a surprising amount of our elders who cling to their arms like a baby to a pacifier (i.e. the NRA’s base of millions of politically active members), although their peers have had their children torn right from under them.
Our elders have failed to act, so now the responsibility has fallen on our shoulders. The cameras are still on us from what is claimed to be the 18th school shooting this year.
Us young people may not have the numbers in terms of the majority of the population, but our influence reaches far and wide. From social media to popular culture in general, we have the power to shift the social tides in the direction that protects the future.
This call to action does not singularly extend to those who want gun control. This can go to issues that are on a more global scale such as the United States’ position on global warming or what will go in between the US-Mexico border.
The time is here and now. We need to save ourselves from the dark future our forefathers have set before us.
We can start by staying up to date and following along with political issues in their true form, not just what we see on Twitter.
It’s happened to us all before. We read a headline of an article and find ourselves appalled with the information, until someone finally reads up on the issue, quotes the tweet, and quotes the piece with the real issue.
In order to form a persuasive argument on issues that can use changing, we need to know everything we talk about first. Using social media to our advantage will only work if those arguments are rock solid.
We, as a cohesive unit, must band together and use the tools we have been born to in order to make a positive impact not only for ourselves, but for our future generations. We have fresh wounds of what it feels like to lose time and time again, and I cannot bear to have my children suffer the same fate.
