About

#OneLess is a social media hashtag accompanied by photos and video of gun owners destroying their firearms in support of gun control legislation, which was launched in late-February 2018 in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Origin

On February 14th, 2018, a mass shooting occurred at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Flroida, in which 17 people were killed and an additional 14 were injured. On February 16th, Facebook user Amanda Meyer uploaded a video of herself destroying her handgun in support of restrictions against semi-automatic weapons (shown below). In the video, she says "I'm going to make sure that there is one less gun in this world."





Spread

The following day, Facebook user Scott-Dani Pappalardo posted a video of himself destroying his "legally registered AR-15" with a table saw to show his support of banning assault weapons (shown below). In the video description, Pappalardo posted the message "My drop in a very large bucket #oneless." Within one week, the video accumulated upwards of 23 million views, 397,000 reactions and





On February 19th, the ABC News Twitter feed reposted Meyer's video. On February 20th, Twitter user @Momin8tr tweeted a photograph of her firearm in pieces after being cut with a grinder saw (shown below).





On February 20th, The Washington Post posted a video to YouTube about the trending hashtag (shown below). That day, a thread about the Pappalardo and the hashtag was submitted to the Kiwi Farms forum.





Parodies

On Twitter, some users posted photographs of disassembled firearms in posts falsely claiming the gun had been destroyed. On February 20th, 2018, Twitter user @Alefantis1488 tweeted a photograph of a disassembled AR-15 with the message "I've destroyed my AR-15. Have you? #oneless" (shown below). The following day, Twitter user @TrippyMcGuire56 tweeted a picture of a disassembled pistol with the caption "#oneless" (shown below, right).





On February 21st, an image showing the @Alefantis1488 tweet juxtaposed next to a screenshot of the same photograph on an AR-15 disassembly instruction page was submitted to /r/weekendgunnit (shown below).





On February 22nd, 2018, YouTuber Donut Operator uploaded a video titled "#oneless," in which he burns a table before showing a video in which a table was used in a street fight (shown below).





Search Interest

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External References