Days after a mass shooting left 17 dead at her high school, Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma González declared at a gun control rally: "We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because we are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law."

Today marks one year since the tragedy, and there have been dozens more mass shootings on U.S. soil. But the laws are slowly changing, too.

"We saw something in Parkland after the shooting that we hadn’t really seen anywhere before which was an entire community came together and galvanized around one clear call to action for stronger gun laws," Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, tells Esquire. "That really kept it at the forefront of the national conversation for so long, a much wider window than we’ve seen after these tragedies in the past."

How have gun laws changed since Parkland?

Since the Parkland shooting, eight states—Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, as well as Washington, D.C.—have passed Red Flag laws which allow family members and law enforcement to seek a court order to temporarily restrict a person’s access to guns if they're a danger to themselves or others. Those laws have already made a difference. More than 1,700 orders allowing guns to be seized for up to a year were issued in 2018 by the courts, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.

In the last year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, other legislative impact includes:

11 states passed laws to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers;

the Trump administration imposed a ban on bump stocks, which enable semiautomatic rifles to fire faster;

more than 90 percent of gun lobby-supported bills were rejected;

In Florida, where the shooting took place, legislators enacted the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which established safeguards in schools named after the school where the shooting took place.

The reaction to Parkland went beyond state and federal lawmakers.



As a direct response to Parkland, Watts says her organization has seen massive upticks in volunteers which has helped make change at the state level. Immediately after the shooting, some new member meetings went from a dozen attendees to a thousand. They now have hundreds of thousands of volunteers, some of whom are running for office themselves.

Parkland also sparked nationwide marches, walk outs, and NRA boycotts, which finally moved the needle for some corporations. Dick's Sporting Goods ceased all sales of assault-style rifles in stores and stopped selling guns to people under the age of 21, regardless of local laws. Walmart raised their minimum age as well and stopped selling items resembling assault-style rifles, including toys and air guns. L.L. Bean and Kroger announced they were raising the minimum age to buy a firearm and ammunition to 21, as well. Those companies said the changes were a direct response to the Parkland shooting. Others like Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Hertz, Enterprise, Avis and Budget announced they were ending their discount programs for NRA members.



But there's still a long way to go.

"Any time you’re talking about an issue where lives are on the line, it feels like it's moving too slowly," Watt says. "I wish we could have wrapped this up after the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook. But the NRA has a 30-year head start."

Kate Storey Esquire Writer-at-Large Kate Storey is a Writer-at-Large for Esquire covering culture, politics, and style.

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