After Parkland shooting: A day-by-day fight over guns in America

Three days after the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, a student who survived it set the stage for the gun control drama of 2018.  "We are going to be the last mass shooting," Emma Gonzalez, 18, said in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, speech that went viral. "We are going to change the law.’’

The last mass shooting? In a nation with about one a day?

In the hours and days after 17 people were killed Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many of the student survivors were adamant: Gun control, as becalmed a movement as any in politics, would now defeat the mighty gun rights lobby.

The students didn’t know you weren’t supposed to politicize a tragedy. Their hashtag motto summed up their hope and their hubris: NeverAgain. Rarely had such intense idealism faced such entrenched opposition, or had political rhetoric soared so high and promised so much.

"This generation is the generation of students you will be reading about next in the textbooks,’’ one student, Cameron Kasky, said when NeverAgain announced a national bus tour. “These are students who are changing the game.  …  We can fix the political system.’’

The students vowed to register traditionally apathetic young people to vote; to force the federal government to tighten gun laws, and to force the states to do so even if Congress would not; to defeat in November even the most senior elected officials backed by the National Rifle Association.

But the students did not anticipate that they would become celebrity culture heroes. “I had no idea there were high school students with such eloquence, such poise and such moral clarity,’’ wrote Georgie Anne Geyer, a veteran commentator. “I am humbled by the hope they give me.’’

To understand what became of such hopes after that bloody Valentine’s Day, consider this calendar of events. 

FEBRUARY

2/14: In his address to the nation after the Parkland shooting, President Donald Trump promises to "tackle the difficult issue of mental health." He does not mention guns.

2/15: Vermont Gov. Phil Scott reiterates his opposition to tightening the state’s gun laws.

2/16: After learning of a plan by an 18-year-old to attack a school in Fair Haven, Vermont, Scott reverses course and says he’s open to new gun laws.

2/17: At a Fort Lauderdale rally, Gonzalez recites familiar arguments against tighter gun laws and leads the crowd in a refrain – "We call B.S.!" By day’s end she’s trending on Twitter, although she has no account herself.

2/18: Gonzalez signs up for Twitter and tweets her first tweet.

2/20: At the state capitol in Tallahassee, Parkland students, some in tears, watch the legislature vote down debate on a control bill filed before the shooting.

2/21: On a visit with other Parkland students to the White House, Sam Zeif — who lost his best friend in the shooting — makes a tearful plea for gun control. "How is it that easy to buy this type of weapon? How did we not stop this after Columbine? After Sandy Hook?’’ he says, placing his hand on the shoulder of a mother whose son died in the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting six years earlier.

• Kasky, a founder of the NeverAgain movement, tweets that he’s gotten off Facebook: “There’s no character count, so the death threats from the @NRA cultists are a bit more graphic than those on twitter.’’

2/22: Florida U.S. senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson join several Parkland students at a CNN Town Hall. Kasky tells Rubio, “it’s hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz. …’’ Kasky asks Rubio if he’d stop accepting money from the NRA. When Rubio demurs, Kasky persists. Rubio says "I will always accept the help of anyone who agrees with my agenda."

• South Dakota lawmakers table a pair of proposals to allow people to carry concealed firearms without a permit.

2/23: U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican who holds an “A” grade from the NRA, announces support for gun control measures, including a federal ban on assault weapons sales. While he supports the Second Amendment, he writes in an op-ed piece, "it does not guarantee that every civilian can bear any and all arms."

2/26: Gonzalez now has nearly twice as many Twitter followers as the NRA — 955,000, compared to the 584,000 the NRA has gained since joining Twitter in 2009. 

2/28:Dick’s Sporting Goods says it will stop selling assault rifles as a result of Parkland.

MARCH

3/1: Numerous corporate sponsors — including Hertz, Avis, Met Life and Allied Van Lines — severed links to the NRA, which calls such moves a "shameful display of political and civic cowardice."

3/6: Gun control activist Lucy McBath, who lost her teenaged son in a shooting in 2012, enters the race in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. She says she decided to run in outrage over Congress’ failure to act after Parkland.

3/9: Florida Gov. Rick Scott signs the first gun control legislation since the Parkland shooting. It tightens gun laws in several ways — including raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21 from 18 — but also allows some teachers in school to be armed.

3/9: In Wadesboro, North Carolina,a gunman kills three people and injures another at a restaurant and bar. In Yountville, California, a man enters a veterans home and kills three staff members before fatally shooting himself.

3/13: The Idaho legislature overwhelmingly approves a “Stand Your Ground” law, which says people have no duty to retreat when they’re defending themselves, their property or other people.

3/18: Parkland student Alex Wind, interviewed on 60 Minutes, says “we are the generation that’s had to be trapped in closets, waiting for police to come, or waiting for a shooter to walk in. … We are the people that know what it’s like, firsthand.’’

3/22: TIME magazine cover features Parkland #NeverAgain student leadersGonzalez, Kasky, Wind, Jaclyn Corin and David Hogg.  

3/23: Trump signs off on the “Fix NICS Act,” which penalizes government agencies for not reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for firearms. The White House supported the measure over one supported by the NRA that would have also expanded the right to carry concealed weapons.  

3/24: NeverAgain’s March for Our Lives in Washington, and other cities across the globe attracts a crowd of more than a million. Protesters call for universal background checks on all gun sales; raising the federal age of gun ownership and possession to 21; reviving the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban; and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines and bump stocks (which make it easier to fire rounds from a semi-automatic weapon by harnessing the gun's recoil to "bump" the trigger faster). Meanwhile, thousands of students in schools across the nation walk out for 17 minutes — one for each Parkland victim.  

3/28: Fox TV host Laura Ingraham tweets: “David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.)’’ When Hogg complains and lists her sponsors, several cancel their ads and condemn Ingraham for targeting a high school student.

3/29: As sponsors cancel ads on her show, Ingraham publicly apologies to Hogg “for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland."

APRIL

4/9: Rep. Ron DeSantis, a leading Republican candidate for Florida governor and self-described “Second Amendment guy,” says he’d have vetoed the state gun control law passed after Parkland.

4/11: In Vermont, Governor Scott signs a law raising the age to buy firearms, banning high-capacity magazines and making it easier to take guns from people who pose a threat. It’s the first significant gun ownership restrictions in the history of the largely rural state.  

4/20: In Kansas, a bastion of gun rights, GOP governor Jeff Colyer signs a bill that will make it a crime for people recently convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense to have a firearm.

► SHOOTING IN ANTIOCH, TENNESSEE

4/22: A gunman kills four people at a Nashville-area Waffle House and wounds two others.  

4/24: Maryland’s GOP governor Larry Hogan signs legislation that establishes an Extreme Risk Protection Order, or red flag law, that bans gun possession by people considered dangerous to themselves or others.

• Parkland students are the stars at TIME magazine’s gala for its “100 Most Influential People’’ issue. Celebrities and spectators gravitate toward González and her classmates, although she herself says the person she really wants to meet is comedian Trevor Noah.

MAY

5/2: Students at schools across the nation walk out of classrooms for 16 minutes to support the Second Amendment. "Stand for the Second" is the idea of Will Riley, a Carlsbad, New Mexico, high school student. He says he watched the Parkland students say that gun control “is what kids are asking for. And I'm thinking, 'I'm not asking for that.’ I look at my friends and I think, 'They're not asking for that.'’’

5/11: Citing opposition from the business community and law enforcement, Oklahoma GOP governor Mary Fallin vetoes a bill to allow people to carry guns without permits. The measure had easily passed both houses in the legislature. "This temporary setback will be rectified when Oklahoma residents elect a new and genuinely pro-Second Amendment governor," says NRA’s legislative affairs chief.

► SHOOTING IN SANTA FE, TEXAS

5/18: A student shoots and kills 10 people and wounds fourteen others at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas.  

5/25: Hogg leads a “die-in’’ at two Publix stores in Parkland to protest the grocery chain’s support of pro-NRA gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam. Publix says it’s suspending and reviewing its political contributions.

5/30: Based on discussions after the Santa Fe High School shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott releases a school and gun safety plan that includes a request that the legislature consider “red flag” laws.

JUNE

6/1: Rhode Island’s governor signs red flag legislation that had bogged down before Parkland, partly because of objections by civil libertarians. They’d argued that firearms shouldn’t be confiscated unless the owner is at least alleged to have committed a crime.

6/4: A day after graduation, Parkland students announce a summer national bus tour to register young voters and press for gun control. Gonzalez: "We're trying to help stop this before it comes to other places.’’ Among the stops: Orlando, site of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting; Aurora, Colorado, site of the 2012 theater shooting; Las Vegas, site of the 2017 country music festival shooting; Charleston, South Carolina, site of the 2015 bible study shooting; Blacksburg, Virginia, site of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.  

6/5: In California’s non-partisan primary, first time candidate Harley Rouda barely secures the second spot on the general election ballot behind 14-term incumbent Dana Rohrabacher, a strong NRA ally.

6/11: A national pro-gun rights tour organized by the Utah Gun Exchange, an online firearms business, will make stops to coincide with the Parkland students’ Road to Change events. The group will drive a military-style armored vehicle with a replica machine gun that sounds like the real thing. Exchange co-owner Bryan Melchior says more guns equals more safety.

• The Naples Daily News reports that Florida's two GOP gubernatorial candidates are sticking to their guns. Adam Putnam and DeSantis remain solid NRA allies. "This is the issue they probably have the least separation on," says Brad Herold, a DeSantis advisor.

6/15: The Road to Change bus tour starts in Chicago. With celebrities like Chance the Rapper and Jennifer Hudson, Parkland students join an annual peace march and rally on the South Side. A local organizer says the crowd is much larger than in previous years. Hogg later tells the New York Times that “all of a sudden, now that we showed up, there were 10,000 people instead of 500.”

6/19: Publication of "#NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line" by Hogg and his sister and fellow Parkland survivor Lauren. It will become a best seller.

6/20: Road to Change visits U.S. Rep. Steve King's office in Sioux City, Iowa, to protest the arch conservative’s stand on guns and history of racially charged statements. González denounces King and accuses him of racism. King ignores the protests.

► SHOOTING IN ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

6/28: A gunman kills five employees at the offices of The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, and wounds two others. 

JULY

7/3: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rules out tighter federal gun laws. He tells a crowd in Kentucky that there’s very little Congress can do to prevent tragedies such as Parkland, except provide money for school security.  

7/11: A Salt Lake City area movie theater complex revokes an agreement to allow the Road to Change tour to hold an event there, saying it “appears to be escalating into a potentially contentious situation” between opposing forces on gun control.

7/14: Road to Change’s Salt Lake stop is switched to a hall in the town of Sandy. About 30 people protest outside. Some hold signs quoting the Second Amendment, and others carry handguns on their hips. The latter are barred from the hall. “I cannot protect my kids if they take my guns away,” one man tells the Salt Lake Tribune.  

7/16: Illinois’s Republican governor Bruce Rauner, a hunter and self-described Second Amendment advocate, signs a law with a red flag provision that also extends the 72-hour gun-purchase waiting period to all firearms, not just handguns.

7/19: Rabbi Jeffrey Myers posts a message on the website of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. After Parkland and other mass shootings and "despite continuous calls for sensible gun control and mental health care, our elected leaders in Washington knew that (the issue) would fade away … Unless there is a dramatic turnaround in the midterm elections, I fear that the status quo will remain unchanged."

7/24: A federal appeals court rules that the Second Amendment protects the right to openly carry a gun in public for self defense. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules 2-1 that Hawaii officials violated a man’s rights when he was denied an “open carry’’ permit. The decision reverses a lower court ruling that said the amendment only applies to guns in homes.

• Hours after a Texas Senate committee considered red flag laws at the request of the governor, the state’s lieutenant governor — who presides over the Senate — suggests that any such bill would not pass in the next legislative session. He says that while the panel considered the proposal at the request of the governor, the governor “has since said he doesn’t advocate red flag laws."

AUGUST

8/1: The NRA increases membership fees for the second time in as many years. “Without this dues increase,” the NRA says of the hike from $40 to $45 for an annual membership, “we simply can’t compete in the 2018 elections.’’

8/15: Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High students return for a new school year. There are new metal detectors and security cameras.

► SHOOTING IN JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA

8/26: A 24-year-old video game player shoots and kills two people, and then himself, at a tournament for players of the football video game Madden in Jacksonville, Florida.

8/28: The gun control group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords kicks off a campaign to elect sympathetic candidates with a $1 million cable TV ad buy against U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock, a northern Virginia Republican. The NRA has spent $137,232 on Comstock’s behalf since she was elected in 2014.

SEPTEMBER

9/4: Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland massacre, approaches pro-Second Amendment Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh at his Senate confirmation hearing and extends his hand. Kavanaugh turns away without shaking. The White House later says that was because a security officer intervened.

9/5: Virginia politicians typically shun the issue of gun control, but The Washington Post says it could be a deciding factor in the tight race between Barbara Comstock and Democratic challenger Jennifer Wexton. "I think it started when the mass school shootings started," says Elaine Lynch, 42, who voted for Comstock in 2014 but will vote for Wexton in November. "People were afraid. Parents sent their kids to school praying that they'd come home."

SHOOTING IN CINCINNATI, OHIO

9/6: A gunman kills three people at the Fifth Third Center skyscraper in Cincinnati before being shot to death by police.    

9/19: Kasky leaves NeverAgain. The high school senior says that in retrospect he’s been too partisan – as at the CNN town hall. “I went into that wanting less conversation and more to embarrass Rubio,” Kasky tells Fox News Radio. He says he met people during the summer Road to Change tour with different political beliefs than his, and he came away wanting to understand more about them. Now he’ll work “on some efforts to encourage bipartisanship or at least discussion that is productive and help a lot of people avoid the mistakes that I made.”

► SHOOTING IN BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA

9/13: A gunman kills five people at three locations in Bakersfield, California, before committing suicide as police close in.  

► SHOOTING IN ABERDEEN, MARYLAND

9/21: An employee kills three people at a Rite Aid distribution facility in Aberdeen, Maryland, before shooting herself in the head. She later dies in the hospital.

9/26: An Associated Press review of state firearms-related legislation passed this year shows a mixed record. Gun control bills passed in a number of states, but the year was not the national game-changer for which gun-control advocates had hoped. Legislatures fell back to predictable — and partisan — patterns.

9/28: House Republicans cancel all votes for October and leave for home with two weeks left on their October schedule to campaign before the midterm elections. No gun control measures have even been considered since the Parkland shooting.

OCTOBER

10/18:  A Kaiser Foundation poll finds that a majority of voters in areas with competitive elections say health care is “very important” in making their voting decisions for Congress. At least a quarter choose health care as the “most important issue.”

10/24: DeSantis releases a robo-call recording with an endorsement by Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was killed in the Parkland attack. Pollack suggests a DeSantis victory will “ensure that no parent loses their child in a school shooting again.” He also calls DeSantis’ opponent, Andrew Gillum – who pledged not to accept money from the NRA — “dangerous for Florida.’’

10/25: Former New York City mayor and gun control advocate Michael Bloomberg announces a $4 million donation to Harley Rouda’s PAC in his California race against Dana Rohrabacher, helping to make that the year’s most expensive House election.

10/26: Filings with the Federal Election Commission show that, in a reversal of history, gun-control advocates have outspent gun-rights groups by more than 40% on next month’s congressional elections. Gun-control groups, including  Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, have spent $20.2 million, compared to $14.1 million by pro-gun groups, led by the NRA.

• NeverAgain’s “Vote for Our Lives” bus tour, designed to register young voters in time for the election, kicks off in Minneapolis.

► SHOOTING IN PITTSBURGH, OHIO

10/27: An avowed anti-Semite kills 11 and injures six, including four police officers, in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

•  Corin, 18 today, casts her first election ballot in early voting in Parkland. 

10/29: The Pentagon says it’s sending at least 5,200 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to prevent members of the migrant caravan from illegally entering the country.

10/31: Everytown for Gun Safety announces more than $700,000 in TV ads against Colorado GOP U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, accusing him of taking “more NRA PAC money than anyone in Colorado’s congressional Delegation.”

NOVEMBER

11/1: Gonzalez has 1.6 million Twitter followers.

11/5: Vote for Our Lives tour arrives in Tallahassee three days after a gunman kills two women and injures five others at a yoga studio. Standing outside the historic Old Capitol, Gonzalez says: “Vote in every election like it’s your last, because it could be.’’

11/6: Election Day. About two-dozen House candidates backed by NRA or known as gun rights supporters are defeated, according to Giffords, including Coffman in Colorado and Comstock in Virginia. Giffords says 88 of 129 candidates it backed won, including Lucy McBath in Georgia. Corin tweets, "We're not going anywhere, @NRA." But at watch party in Parkland, she tells The Guardian, “I’m shaking with anger’’ at loss of the Florida governorship and U.S. Senate seat to DeSantis and Scott, both gun control foes.

11/7: NRA celebrates victories in U.S. Senate races in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, North Dakota and Indiana. "ThankYou to all @NRA members who got out and voted," the group tweets. 'You are the most powerful force in American politics, and we will never stop fighting against the anti-gun elitists bent on destroying our Second Amendment freedoms."

► SHOOTING IN THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA

• A gunman kills 12 people, including a policeman, at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, that’s hosting a student line-dancing event. He then kills himself.

11/10: AP calls House election in California district for Rouda over Rohrabacher.

► SHOOTING IN CHICAGO

11/19: A gunman kills four people in a shooting at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, one of the day’s several mass shootings.

POSTSCRIPT

Despite Gonzalez’ prediction, NeverAgain has not substantially “changed the law’’ on guns.   

States this year approved more than 50 gun control measures, including laws to keep guns from dangerous people, among them those convicted of domestic violence; to increase background checks on gun sales; to restrict concealed carrying of guns; and to ban the use of bump stocks. This month the Trump administration also issued a federal regulation banning bump stocks.

But there was no significant federal legislation. None of the major goals of the March for Our Lives was realized, and gun control did not become an issue on which most voters based their decisions. In Florida, only 10% said gun policy was important to their vote, compared to 25% who mentioned health care and immigration.

It’s too early to know if 2018 was a turning point in the politics of guns, or merely a dramatic standoff. It certainly left the NeverAgain students with an appreciation for how hard change comes, if it comes at all.  

This is only the start, Hogg told reporters: “It’s going to be a long road.’’