Parkland’s Corin: Guns Kill ‘More People a Year Than Leukemia’
BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION. I’m Margaret Brennan.
We continue our conversation with Stoneman Douglas High School students Jaclyn Corin, Ryan Deitsch and Delaney Tarr, plus Cameron Kasky and Emma Gonzalez.
You guys are more than — than students. You’ve become activists. You’ve had this incredible turnout, not just here in Washington, but around the country.
Emma, how do you keep this momentum going?
EMMA GONZALEZ, STONEMAN DOUGLAS STUDENT: We’re going to be pushing for — just as Ryan was saying, we’re going to be revving up for the election. This is not the end. This was just the beginning. We’re going to — over the summer we’re going to try to, you know, like go around to colleges and stuff and — or our communities, reach out to the kids locally all around the country.
And we didn’t just have support all over the country, we had support all over the world. We had like almost 900 marches yesterday.
BRENNAN: What does that feel like? I mean what did you do after the march? Did you go home and watch the news coverage or —
GONZALEZ: We went to the — we went — we went to eat some food. I mean we had a nice hang out at the hotel, which is why my voice is so hoarse because I was screaming like the whole night.
CAMERON KASKY, STONEMAN DOUGLAS STUDENT: We, you know, moving forward, it’s all about registering to vote, educating others and starting more of conversation so more people get politically involved because, again, the youth of America needs to step up and start voting. You’ll see the statistics. It’s an embarrassing turnout. One in five people in the last election showed up in the 18 to, was it 29, demographic? And we —
BRENNAN: And you think — for you all at this table, you have become single issue voters. You won’t back someone or vote for them unless they sign on to the agenda that you’ve laid out?
GONZALEZ: We’re not backing anybody in general. And we’re not going to be single voters at all.
BRENNAN: But when you do get the chance to vote, that is something — you won’t vote for someone who doesn’t support what you’re asking for?
JACLYN CORIN, STONEMAN DOUGLAS STUDENT: Yes. It should be something that is at the forefront of the political conversation. It kills more people a year than leukemia. It’s an epidemic that we need to face.
BRENNAN: But which it — specifically someone has to call for a ban on AR-15s for you to vote for them?
CORIN: I mean —
RYAN DEITSCH, STONEMAN DOUGLAS STUDENT: Assault weapons.
CORIN: I would favor that candidate over another one that — as long as they support some of our ideals more so than the other person, I would vote for them.
DELANEY TARR, STONEMAN DOUGLAS STUDENT: We know that this is an issue of compromise and not necessarily in every state we’re going to have a politics who is asking for everything that we’re asking for. But we want, more than anything, our voters to make educated votes. We want them to know what it is they’re voting on. And that’s what we’ve been pushing, because even if they don’t necessarily always agree with us, our country needs to know what they’re voting on. We can’t have them stand behind when there’s issues like this that need to be at the forefront of the conversation. Like Jackie (ph) said, this needs to be a centralized issue in the next election.
KASKY: From what you’ve seen from very recent polls, we were at Fox News this morning. We saw a poll they put out. The American people are starting to not be interested in putting anybody into office who’s on the NRA’s payroll.
BRENNAN: Well, we actually also have a poll ourselves that I wanted to cite to you, the CBS News/Ugov poll shows two-thirds of those surveyed say they need to agree with their candidates for the midterm elections on the issue of gun control. So what we see in November is going to be heavily influenced, they are saying, by where that candidate stands on gun control. That’s consistent among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
CORIN: As it should be.
GONZALEZ: Because this is a non-party issue. This is bipartisan.
KASKY: And this is one of the issues at the forefront of our nation right now because as you’ve seen there have been shooting since the one at Stoneman Douglas. The — this violence isn’t going to end unless we do something concrete.
BRENNAN: And yet you didn’t see the change that you were asking for immediately. This, for you, is a long term campaign.
DEITSCH: Well — well, it’s the — it’s the government, the bureaucracy, and they will continually bog things down. I mean the Stop School Violence Act, if you actually read the whole thing, it doesn’t really do much. Most of it is already things that have been done, especially in our school a lot of those were already checked off, but these things still happened. I mean it’s just going to continue to happen unless we change something.
KASKY: That bill, the silent rhetoric behind it is that since the government will never agree on anything, let’s pass something very easy and simple that everyone can get behind. But that’s because it doesn’t do anything. This — that bill does nothing to keep the students or people outside of schools outside of the line of fire and we’re fighting for people everywhere.
BRENNAN: That bill you’re talking about, fix NICS, you’re talking about —
CORIN: The Stop School Violence Act.
KASKY: No, the Stop School Violence Act.
This isn’t just in schools. We met with people from communities who are frightened to leave their houses because — and who have woken up to the sound of gunshots very frequently. This is everywhere. This is an epidemic. And the Stop School Violence Act does almost nothing to stop it. It doesn’t say the word “gun” once. It doesn’t say the words “background checks” once. And 97 percent of the country in a poll showed that they support universal background checks. Anyone who doesn’t, I don’t understand that.
BRENNAN: All right. Well, all of you, as you say, you’re going to continue to work on this. We’ll continue to track what you get done.
Thank you very much for coming here.
CORIN: Thank you for having us.
TARR: Thank you.
