Since the Parkland, Florida school shooting of 2018, high schoolers around the country have advocated for gun control legislation through their participation in March For Our Lives (MFOL). MFOL was founded by survivors of the Parkland attack, and after organizing a national demonstration with over 1 million participants, it has continued to focus on ending gun violence. In 2019, four IHS students, Chloe Moore ‘20, Karuna Prasad ‘20, Zoey Zentner ‘20, and Leah Wardlaw ‘20, founded an Ithaca chapter of MFOL. I sat down with Moore, the president of the chapter, to learn more about MFOL Ithaca’s advocacy and vision for the future.
Vaynu Kadiyali ‘19: What is MFOL?
Chloe Moore ‘20: MFOL is a student-led organization to end gun violence in America. It started after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in Parkland, Florida last February. I think for a while, I was aware of the gun violence epidemic in America, but like so many, I had become desensitized to it; I was in the mindset that I think a lot of youth are in, that my voice didn’t really matter. But after the Parkland shooting, I saw the survivors standing up, speaking out, and really dominating the news cycle. That made me realize that I do have a voice and my opinions do matter, and that I and every other kid deserves to have a say about whether or not we get shot in school. I started the Ithaca chapter because the issue suddenly felt very close to home, because the people being affected by gun violence are, in a lot of cases, kids, but the people who are working to end gun violence are also kids.
VK: A year after the Parkland shooting, in your eyes, what has changed, for better or for worse?
CM: I try to stay optimistic. We’ve made a lot of progress. We elected a common-sense gun reform majority to the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, and I think we’ve passed something like 50 new state-level gun safety laws. In some ways, things have stayed the same, with the hate-fueled shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue and the Thousands Oaks shooting in California, and the continued media attacks (I’m looking at you, Fox News) on the MFOL founders. But all in all, I think we’re shifting the conversation and we’re definitely making progress, and that feels like a really powerful way to honor victims of gun violence.
VK: What do you hope to accomplish through your activism? What does that look like at a local level, and at a national one?
CM: I just want people to stop getting shot. That’s why I’m out here. I want kids to be able to go to school without having panic attacks. I want women to stop fearing for their safety if their partner owns a gun and is abusive. I want an end to racist and homophobic hate crimes and I want lower-income communities to stop feeling the devastating effects of gun violence at higher percentages. I want to de-stigmatize mental health problems and keep people safe. I have no interest in banning all guns or ending hunting. I just want people to stop dying painful and preventable deaths. At the local level that means contacting representatives and getting money out of politics; Tom Reed took $2,000 from the NRA in the 2018 midterms alone, and he’s taken thousands more from them throughout his career. We’re advocating, on the local and national levels, universal background checks across state lines, banning bump stocks and high capacity magazines, getting automatic and semi-automatic weapons off the street, closing the gun show and online sales loopholes in background check laws, and ending concealed carry across state lines.
VK: How would proposed gun control legislation address build upon or limit the Second Amendment? Does the Second Amendment inherently prevent gun control?
CM: Look, I don’t want the government to steal anyone’s guns. If you have a clean record and aren’t a danger to yourself or others, you should be allowed to purchase a reasonable kind of gun, either for hunting or if you consider it part of being a homeowner, once you pass a thorough background check. The Second Amendment allows a “well-regulated militia,” so the idea that regulating weapons of war is somehow unconstitutional just isn’t true. Furthermore, the Second Amendment was originally written to ensure that local militias could exist just after the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t until 2008 that the Supreme Court said individuals have a right to bear arms, actually. So this idea that the current gun safety movement is trying to “undo” years of free gun ownership isn’t true. I mean, Reagan wanted gun control! I’m always happy to have reasonable, civil debate about the issues I’m passionate about. But that doesn’t work if people just invoke the Second Amendment without contextualizing it or reading its wording closely. It was written a long time ago, and in a lot of ways it doesn’t work to apply 18th-century laws to 21st-century weapons. The arms that we’re talking about today are on a scale that the writers of the Constitution could never have dreamed of, so it doesn’t work to say that earlier laws are always completely relevant. Gun ownership has a long tradition in America, and that’s fine. But that tradition means nothing if it costs people their lives.
VK: What’s the role of social media in local and national MFOL efforts?
CM: One of the things that’s great about MFOL is that it’s all youth-led, so social media is a really effective tool and platform for spreading the word. It’s great for advertising initiatives like #WriteYourReps, which urges kids to write their senators and representatives, and for sharing information about bigger things like marches. There are some disadvantages to using, say, Twitter as a platform for complex debate, but all in all, it’s a great way to connect people who otherwise might not get involved. The Instagram and Twitter for our chapter are @mfolithaca.
VK: How can students get involved with MFOL? Why should they?
CM: Kids can follow the Instagram and Twitter for updates and can join our mailing list for information about when meetings are going to be. We try to schedule meetings in good places and at good times. I think if you’re going to join any movement, it should be MFOL, because it is actively saving lives, and because it is inherently intersectional and feminist, anti-racist, and anti-classist. Standing up and speaking out can seem hard, but it’s really empowering and important to do, and it’s free! There’s strength in numbers, and MFOL is a national organization that can make real change.