By Sarah Rayne Baker
Oftentimes, following a mass shooting in the United States, a very predictable gun control “debate” occurs on the news, in legislation and political conversation. It usually goes something like “this sucks, but not enough to really, really change anything about how we handle the sales and distribution of firearms. That’s the Second Amendment you’re talking about!” There are almost no exceptions to this tired rhetoric.
Parkland, Florida however, is one.
The difference here is not the gun control “debate” itself, but the treatment of the victims who are trying to participate in this conversation.
On Feb. 20, the Florida House voted down a motion to ban over 200 assault weapons as well as high capacity magazines 36-71.
This happened only six days after 17 lives were taken by 19 year-old Nikolas Cruz and the AR-15 he brought onto the Parkland school campus. Students from the high school were in attendance to watch the vote, students who had lost friends and loved ones less than a week beforehand.
Pictures of the students weeping and comforting one another after the vote was announced circulated the internet moments afterward, and a few politicians couldn’t keep from expressing their glee.
Dinesh D’Souza tweeted first, “Adults 1, kids 0.”
Then, in a separate tweet, came his already infamous line, “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs.”
Shortly after, he noticed backlash in his twitter mentions, including from the students themselves, as well as widespread media coverage of his gross insensitivity. He tried defending his words with yet another tweet: “Genuine grief I can empathize with,” sure, buddy, “but grief organized for the cameras–politically orchestrated grief–strikes me as phony & inauthentic.”
An hour and a half later, he decided it would be a good idea to tag on an actual consolation for the victims, a phony and politically orchestrated consolation, some might say, to combat the onslaught of criticism piling up against him. “While the media exploits the Parkland shooting, my heart goes out to the parents and family members who are grieving the loss of loved ones.”
D’Souza isn’t even some horrifically unique jerkwad. If he was, this would be nothing out of the ordinary in the grand scheme of things. Really messed up, sure, but not unheard of in shootings past. After the massacre in Texas, Fox News’ repeated “liberal” as the knee-jerk insult when it came to townsfolk speaking up about political change.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, also liked tweets and supported conspiracy theories that pushed the absurd notion that one of the Parkland shooting survivors advocating for gun control was somehow being manipulated by the FBI.
One message described the teenager, David Hogg, as “the kid who has been running his mouth about how Donald Trump and the GOP are teaming to help murder high school kids by upholding the Second Amendment … Hogg is the son of an FBI agent.”
Trump and D’Souza are hardly acting alone. Conspiracy theories accusing Parkland victims of being crisis actors or having been hijacked by left-wing groups have circulated the web since the shooting occurred.
This kind of unjust, accusatory attitude doesn’t just come from the more conservative side of the spectrum. Sympathizers and left-leaning gun control advocates are treating victims with just as much scrutiny.
Alexandra Seltzer, a reporter local to Parkland, tweeted a photo of a man in his car, holding up a picture of a girl on his phone. The caption was, “Here is Andrew Pollack yesterday showing a photo of his daughter Meadow. At that time he was searching for her. Today he said ‘she’s gone.’”
The photo was taken as he waited in his car outside the school on the day of the Parkland shooting. One small detail Seltzer’s paper, the Palm Beach Post, did not donate any printspace to the shirt he was wearing, one that displayed very clearly, “Trump 2020.” Twitter users, however, were much more eager to talk about it.
People made insulting and personal criticisms of Pollack, even going as far as blaming him for the death of his own daughter, by way of his support for Donald Trump.
I’m not sure about anybody else, but when I’m talking to a man whose child has just been murdered, my last thought is, “Okay, sure, but who did you vote for?”
Apparently, in this day and age, political ideology overrides people’s sense of basic morality. I don’t necessarily think we need to listen to someone’s personal story more so than an expert in the subject when it comes to our approaches for social change. But mocking and insulting victims of a tragedy because they’re speaking up about how it has affected them, and because they disagree with you, tells me more about our current political climate than the actual tragedy does.
It proves to me that we live in a time where discussion is no longer possible, not without baring teeth and plugging our ears whenever someone else is trying to speak.
That is why Parkland stands out to me and that is why I think the aftermath alone deserves just as much attention as the shooting itself.