What Gun-Control Activists Can Learn From the Civil-Rights Movement
Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are expected to show up at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday to demand that Congress do something about gun control. In the aftermath of the horrific high-school shooting in Parkland, Florida, these activists are trying to end the political gridlock on gun violence. The march is a display of grass-roots enthusiasm, intended to overcome the power of the NRA and its allies on Capitol Hill.
Even as Washington stands still, public support for gun control keeps growing. According to Gallup, 67 percent of Americans believe that there needs to be stricter regulations on the sale of firearms. This constitutes the highest level of support in the 25 years since President Bill Clinton worked with a Democratic Congress to enact the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act in 1993. Polls also show that in the politically powerful suburbs, interest in firearm regulation is getting stronger.
The activists hope that the events of the upcoming weekend can have the same kind of impact as the civil-rights-era March on Washington on August 28, 1963. But their nascent movement has yet to assemble the key organizational and political assets that helped that earlier march shift the debate, and force through legislation. If Saturday’s marchers hope to replicate that earlier success, they will first need to study it closely, and learn its lessons.
By the late summer of 1963, when activists marched on the White House and Capitol Hill, Americans had seen the brutal attacks by Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor’s police officers on young civil-rights marchers in Birmingham, Alabama, and President John F. Kennedy had finally sent Congress a civil-rights bill to end segregation. Bayard Rustin of the Southern Christian Leadership
