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After Gun Control Marches, Itll Go Away vs. We Are Not Cynical Yet
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/us/politics/gun-control-marches-protests.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/us/politics/gun-control-marches-protests.html
Every time something happens, everybodys hollering, Garland Ashby, 77, the owner of an estimated 75 guns, said of the recent protests over gun control, rubbing at his cigarette stub from a park bench in this town of 4,200. A couple of months its in the news, and then its gone.
More than a week has passed since some 800 student-led marches pulsed through the country and abroad more than a week for momentum to build, or stall out, or morph into something beyond anyones control. And in this tossup congressional district, a short drive from the demonstrations nexus in Washington, and in other House battlegrounds nationwide, a consensus has formed on at least this much: Both sides think they are being underestimated. Both insist their adversaries will tire eventually, punching themselves out.
Itll go away, Mr. Ashby predicted, grinding the cigarette into the mud. Like all the other times.
Looking to history, fledgling activists are researching Vietnam-era student protests for context and inspiration. They are using words like intersectional. They are quoting favored lyrics from Hamilton: This is not a moment, its the movement.
That movement, though, will hinge on reversing years of below-average voter turnout among young Americans translating sound and fury into the long, slow work of lasting change.
Yet even in corners of the country unaccustomed to dissent on gun issues, supporters of restrictions sense an opening. In Maines Second Congressional District, a region that includes both small cities and parcels of land so rural they are officially called unorganized territory, school walkouts and satellite March for Our Lives protests have specked the map, powered by students and Democratic activists.
Though gun owners have betrayed little immediate concern If they hang around, well still be here, and if they dont, well still be here, said Todd Tolhurst, the president of Gun Owners of Maine students seem comfortable with their odds in any war of attrition.
Well outlive them, said Sean Monteith, 17, a junior at Lewiston High School, adding that he hoped his peers would be able to outvote them, too. His cellphone includes a list of action items and reminders: connect with city council, draft legislation, do not go on assumptions.