This Saturday, in over 800 cities and towns across the United States, including at least 11 in Maine, young people will be Marching For Our Lives and demanding action to make our schools safe.
We are taking matters into our own hands (and feet) because – after so many school shootings like the one that took 17 lives on Valentine’s Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – it has become crystal clear we cannot count on our current crop of political leaders to act.
As 17-year-old Parkland survivor Cameron Kasky put it, “Our politicians abandoned us by failing to keep guns out of schools. But this time, my classmates and I are going to hold them to account. This time we are going to pressure them to take action.”
What are young people in Maine going to do to hold our state leaders accountable? Step one is research. Getting online and understanding the issues, researching what our elected officials say, and then researching their record including what they have done to try to change things – and when it comes to guns, looking at who their friends are as well.
When you look up Maine on the Giffords Law Center’s “Annual Gun Law Scorecard,” you will see Maine has earned an “F” for a variety of reasons. Outgoing Governor Paul LePage has never supported any gun safety legislation. A recent Portland Press Herald story, “Candidates for Maine governor weigh in on gun reform,” provided some information on where the Republicans and Democrats running to replace Governor LePage stand on a handful of gun-related issues. In broad terms, the Democratic candidates are in favor of more action on gun safety, the Republicans are not, with some exceptions when it comes to banning bump-stocks that turn regular guns into machine guns.
The other place young people or anyone else can get really specific information about individual lawmakers and their record is by looking them up on Project Vote Smart, which allows you to search any politician and see how they have actually behaved and been rated over their career when it comes to the issue of gun safety (or many other issues). Search the person’s name, click on ratings, then scroll down to guns, and you will be able to see how they are rated by the National Rifle Association or other gun related groups.
Most results follow traditional partisan lines – the Republican candidates have high ratings from the NRA and the Democrats have low ratings.
However, we were surprised to see that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Janet Mills scored an “A” or “A+” rating from the NRA during her four terms in the Maine House of Representatives from 2002 to 2008. The NRA is very tight-lipped about sharing its scorecards and the votes it bases its ratings on, but we expect there will be a lot of young people this weekend hoping to run in to Attorney General Mills, Maine’s top law enforcement officer, and ask her to explain both her high ratings from the NRA in the past – and where she stands on the issue today.
That is what “holding our political leaders to account” means in 2018. The next step is creating change. As Cameron Kasky put it, “change that starts by folks showing up to the polls and voting all those individuals who are in the back pockets of gun lobbyists out of office.” See you Saturday.
Jackson Chadwick and other students at Camden Hills High School take part in the National School Walkout for gun safety on March 15, 2018.
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