When he was younger, Kasky saw how he and his friends were able to give Americans hope. He was 17 when they traveled the country in a tour bus, meeting hundreds of people and registering many to vote. Together, they helped organize a million-person march in D.C.
People who had given up on the possibility of effecting change after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, suddenly believed again. Now he thinks about the people he met on that tour.
“What am I supposed to say if I bump into these people again?” he said.
Since Parkland, there have been more than 900 shootings at K-12 schools, including 32 indiscriminate attacks aimed at hurting the most people possible, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database . Shootings on school property have increased during a time when billions of dollars are being spent to make schools safer, said lead researcher David Riedman.
In May, Kasky watched as news broke of a former student fatally shooting 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Just like in Parkland, armed officers didn’t go inside, he said. He fears Americans simply don’t have the “bandwidth” to mobilize around school shootings anymore.
“Any gun control nonprofit can print out a list of accomplishments that have been made and talk about them, but in all reality what’s been done to stop school shootings?” he said.
So why did he pursue comedy?
“When you meet certain members of Congress and look them in the eye, it’s hard not to want to parody everything you ever see.”
After learning Monday of students being gunned down in Michigan, he said there’s an “obvious conclusion” people can draw from the incident – and from the steady stream of school shootings since Columbine.
“If you look at this and think that elected officials are going to save your kids just be promising to do it, that’s on you,” he said.
‘We can use that as momentum’
Sari Kaufman, then 15 and a sophomore, was in debate class and didn’t immediately recognize what would turn out to be the sound of gunfire.
Last summer, she sat alongside fellow survivors in the U.S. Senate gallery as lawmakers passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act – the most significant federal gun safety bill in three decades. She interned with its sponsor, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
“Even though it wasn’t everything we wanted, for me, it was a really special moment … seeing that our hard work did pay off, and that we can use that as momentum to show that we can get Republicans to support some of these policies,” Kaufman said.
Now 20, Kaufman is a junior studying political science at Yale University, where she recently started a chapter of Students Demand Action, a student advocacy group tied to Everytown for Gun Safety. She hopes to pursue a career in policy or politics.
Kaufman wants to put financial pressure on gun manufacturers. Last month, she and other activists protested at one of the nation’s largest firearm industry trade shows in Las Vegas.
“We were trying to make these gun executives recognize that the work that they’re doing isn’t just to make a profit and increase their stock, but it’s actually leading to more deaths and tragedies like Parkland,” said Kaufman, who thinks about her classmates who were killed every day.
Each time there’s another mass shooting, Kaufman said she hears how her peers talk about them on campus. She’s worried gun violence has become normalized and accepted.
She refuses to concede that.
“There’s way more compromise and common ground in gun violence than people acknowledge, and politicians will purposely try to create a wedge between Americans on this issue because it’s good politics for them,” Kaufman said. “We need more and more people to come together.”
Reach reporter Grace Hauck via email or follow her on Twitter at @grace_hauck .