Parkland Survivors Unveil Plan on Guns

Adeel Hassan

August 21, 2019 11:44 PM

March for Our Lives, a group led by student survivors of last year’s mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, unveiled an ambitious gun control platform on Wednesday that would ban assault-style weapons, raise the minimum age for buying firearms, create a national gun registry and require gun owners to pay for new licenses each year.

Parkland Survivors Unveil Plan on Guns

The plan would go well beyond gun-control measures like “red flag” laws and expanded background checks, which have been openly discussed after 31 people were killed in recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas.

Most, if not all, of the proposals in the Parkland group’s “Peace Plan for a Safer America” would face opposition from the gun lobby and its supporters in the federal government, who would be likely to argue that the measures would impinge on Second Amendment rights.

The student activists, who organized and led the March for Our Lives — their first act of protest — are calling for a comprehensive plan that is as sweeping and demanding as the Green New Deal, the resolution introduced in Congress this year that charts a grand plan for tackling climate change.

“We know this seems ambitious, given Washington’s apathy to decades of bloodshed in our schools, neighborhoods, and even our houses of worship,” David Hogg, 19, a Parkland survivor and a founder of March for Our Lives, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning. “It’s okay to disagree with us — but we know video games aren’t to blame.”

The plan’s major proposals include:

— A national licensing and gun registry.

— A ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

— A mandatory gun buyback program for assault-style weapons, and a voluntary buyback for other firearms.

— A limit of one firearm purchase a month per person.

— The establishment of a “national director of gun violence prevention” who would report directly to the White House.

— Raising the minimum age to buy guns to 21, from 18.

— A new multistep gun licensing system, overseen by Washington, that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day wait before gun purchases are approved. Licenses would need to be renewed annually.

— A Peace Corps-style program that would pay for young people to work on gun violence prevention for a year in communities and nonprofit groups around the country.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Adeel Hassan