My Turn: A vision for gun control

Editor’s note: When it was originally scheduled in lat March, the Annual Town Meeting was to include a vote on this motion: “To see if the town will vote to support the proposal of the Eighth Grade Warrant Article Group to support the Parkland, Florida school students’ March for Our Lives [effort]  to end school shootings and shootings all over the country by raising the standard of gun ownership, and to halve the rate of gun deaths in ten years.” 

At the beginning of the year, interested eighth-graders in Lincoln came together and formed the Warrant Article Group of 2020. We were prepared to bring our petition regarding gun regulation to Town Meeting. As students, we feel strongly that we need more laws regulating guns and gun usage. We researched the topic and got the required signatures for a petition, along the way meeting with the K-8 School Committee, the Board of Selectmen and State Sen. Michael Barrett. Sadly, the coronavirus swept through the nation, and Town Meeting had to be postponed; however, we still want to share our ideas.

Over the past decade there has been a huge increase in mass shootings, resulting in the need for more gun laws. Since 2000 there have been more than 150 mass shootings in 43 of the 50 states in the United States, and over 50 have taken place in 2020. These shootings are getting so common that many of them are not even reported in the news. Over the past six years, gun violence has increased by 30%. Of these mass shootings 27.6% happen at school, and people of ages 15–24 in the United States are 50 times more likely to die in a shooting than in other countries of an equivalent economy.

One specific shooting that greatly affected our lives and interest in this subject was committed by a 19-year-old: the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School shooting in 2018 in Parkland, Fla. March for Our Lives is a nonprofit organization created by Parkland students who wanted to take a stand against school and mass shootings. Now they are working to get Congress to pass laws against gun violence, and to make schools a safer place, through a plan of action that goes by the acronym CHANGE:

Change the standards of gun ownership
Halve the rates of gun deaths in ten years 
Accountability for the gun lobby and industry
Name a director of gun violence prevention     
Generate community-based solutions
Empower the next generation

 In Massachusetts, 15-year-olds can possess a firearms ID card that allows them to own rifles and shotguns. Once you turn 18, you are eligible for a concealed carrier license. In addition, there is a “red flag” law in Massachusetts and 16 other states that allows family members, roommates, law enforcement, and school personnel to petition a court to order the revocation of one’s gun rights. In just the first year of this law, there were 20 cases sent to court in Massachusetts and 17 were approved.

The gun laws vary from state to state. Seven states make it legal for a resident to carry a handgun without a permit, 10 states have laws regarding assault weapons, 16 states require background checks when buying long guns privately, and 21 states require background checks for private sales of handguns.

We also reviewed the wording of the Second Amendment. Since 1788, we have created more lethal weapons, but we also have more efficient means of protection. The Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It includes the word “regulated,” implying that the framers of the Constitution wanted there to be some regulations regarding guns. In the 1700s, people were using muskets, which were inaccurate and had minimal range — not semiautomatic handguns. No one could predict the guns we would have today.

Overall, we are not trying to eradicate every gun; we just feel that there is a lack of effective gun legislation being considered in our country today. Our idea is to urge our senators and representatives to highlight the need for gun control legislation and take the necessary action to make changes. In addition, we will notify March for Our Lives about our support of their program.

Though we didn’t have the opportunity to pass the citizen petition we worked so hard on, we still learned a great deal from everything we did. During this project, everyone learned about local government as well as about gun laws and legislation. Thanks to this work, in the future we will be able to apply these skills to other areas in our lives. There have always been inequalities in our world and it is important to be able to fight for them. With the skills we have learned from being a part of this group, we will be better able to make a difference.

Sincerely,

The 8th-Grade Warrant Article Group 2020: Gray Birchby, Hannah Bodner, Zoe Borden, Devon Das, Niko Kontos, Courtney Mitchell, and Alice Moynihan

”My Turn” is a forum for Lincoln residents to offer their views on any subject of interest to other Lincolnites. Submissions must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Items will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.