TAKING ACTION

Parkland Students Propose Comprehensive Gun-Control Plan

Mass-shooting survivors and activists put up plan that would ban assault weapons and raise the minimum age for buying firearms.

Student activists and survivors of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, unveiled a comprehensive gun-control program on Wednesday that would ban assault-style weapons, raise the minimum age for buying firearms, and create a national gun registry. The proposal, Peace Plan for a Safer America, was crafted by March for Our Lives—the group founded by former students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who have been pushing for gun restrictions. It proposes measures such as a mandatory gun-buyback program for assault-style weapons, a federal system of gun licensing requiring background checks, and raising the minimum age to buy guns to 21. The plan also seeks to boost federal funding for gun-violence research and established a “national director of gun violence prevention” that would report directly to the White House.

“We know this seems ambitious, given Washington’s apathy to decades of bloodshed in our schools, neighborhoods, and even our houses of worship,” Parkland survivor David Hogg tweeted Wednesday. “It’s okay to disagree with us—but we know video games aren’t to blame.”