When teenagers have to take the guns away from adults

In America teenagers now possess greater moral authority than the adults who knowingly facilitate their slaughter.

There's something especially bitter about the number of mass shootings in America that have targeted children and teenagers.

Especially when you consider how many teenagers, with all their internal conflicts, are legally permitted to access, own or operate lethal weapons of war, before turning them on their contemporaries.

Adults have put these magazine fed, semi-automatic weapons in their hands. Adults have agitated to ensure that teenagers will continue to have access to these magazine fed, semi-automatics weapons.

After each horrifying school massacre it is adults who take to the airwaves to say these bloody outrages are a price of freedom.

That means in America in 2018 we have reached the point where teenagers now possess the higher moral ground than the adults who knowingly facilitate their slaughter.

Think about what an extraordinary development that is. That teenagers are comporting themselves with more maturity and foresight than many of the adults who have tried to halt their progress.

After the Parkland, Florida school massacre a group of clear thinking and highly credible young teenagers have found a national platform for their simple message: they want gun control.

They are speaking out, organizing events, and holding politicians who receive large donations from the NRA accountable. It's working.

The laws that permit people to easily obtain magazine fed, semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 have to change, they demand. We should not be making it easy for people to obtain the kind of weapons that make it easy for them to slaughter children in American high schools.

It's extraordinary to think we have not witnessed this kind of response before, this kind of pushback. Previously we only saw grief stricken kids being interviewed on CNN and then quickly forgotten as we braced for the next outrage.

These kids have said enough. They have refused to be bullied or intimidated off the town square (even though all of them have by now received death threats from so-called guns rights advocates, how about that for irony?).

What's different this time is that they and the country have reached a tipping point. After their calls to America's most prominent corporate sponsors, most major brands have concluded their relationships with the NRA, which is quickly becoming as toxic a brand itself as the petrochemical industry.

The teenagers from Parkland have maintained the country's focus on the need for gun control and the country is getting the message. Hearing from a child who had to cower in a closet whilst a person with a semi-automatic massacred his or her friends puts you right at the heart of this debate. As long as these weapons are easily accessible they and we stand no chance.

As if to confirm the outlook of the Florida teenagers it later emerged that the gun carrying deputy in charge of their safety refused to enter the Parkland school to try and subdue or stop the shooter. He knew that his gun was no match for an AR-15 semi-automatic.

A shot from a handgun is a simple stabbing with a bullet. It goes in like a nail. But a high velocity shot from an AR-15 hits you like an exploding Coke can. It's like a grenade going off inside you.

Doctors know this, and now thanks to these principled teenagers most Americans are slowly learning it too. 

It's time to control who can access these weapons of war. Start by taking them out of the hands of teenagers, these young protesters demand. And start now.