Why Kids Should Sue The Government For Failing On Gun Control

http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/02/16/parkland-mass-shooting-miles-howard?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180216


There are two things about the Parkland school shooting that stand out.

The first factor is the body count — 17 dead — which establishes Parkland as one of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history.

The second thing that makes Parkland feel different is how quickly the surviving students have taken to the Internet to condemn lawmakers for refusing to enact the kind of sensible gun control laws that most Americans have wanted since the Sandy Hook massacre.



For decades, students and parents have made their case for gun control by sincerely appealing to the empathetic side of politicians and trying to win “hearts and minds.” Both of these tactics rest upon good faith: the presumption that most members of Congress believe in keeping the American landscape — and especially the American classroom — as safe for children as reasonably possible.

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What if kids and their parents sued the United States government for blocking gun control reform while knowing the risks this poses to the life and liberty of students?

This idea isn’t half as crazy as it sounds, particularly because there’s already a legal precedent for a suit like this. In 2015, a group of children filed suit against the Obama administration and various government agencies for failing to take meaningful action on mitigating climate change. The lawsuit argued that the government did nothing knowing that this would imperil the plaintiffs’ right to an inhabitable planet. A federal appeals court allowed the long-shot suit to go to trial. Since then, similar lawsuits have been filed around the world, including a more recent one that names the Trump administration as a defendant.

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