There are a number of organizations on Winthrop’s campus, all with different goals and visions, but one organization has a clear mission: ending gun violence.
Winthrop March for Our Lives is the university’s chapter of the national organization. While its origins date back to the summer of 2019, the MFOL national organization was founded in the wake of the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida in 2018, according to MFOL’s website.
Lucaya Lamphier, the president for Winthrop MFOL, said that national organization’s mission is to spread “awareness and information about gun violence and gun control” and issues related to gun violence, including mental health issues. Lamphier said that that mission is also the mission of the Winthrop chapter.
The Winthrop chapter of MFOL organizes events such as bake sales and tablings as well as marches and demonstrations. Lamphier said that the group is organizing a march for Wed., March 25 following the national organization “releasing a new plan on [March 24] related to gun control.” The march, which is open to the public, will begin at 6 p.m. in front of Byrnes Auditorium and will travel a set route to city hall in Rock Hill. On March 24 during Common Time, the group will hold a “poster workshop” on the campus green outside of the DiGiorgio Campus Center (weather permitting) with a backup location in the Fishbowl in Digs.
As the run for the White House continues and a number of issues are subject to discussion, Winthrop MFOL member Sarah Jackson said she has not heard the issue of gun violence mentioned very much by the candidates.
“I think [the lack of talk about gun control legislation] is part of why we’re wanting to do this in solidarity with the national organization,” Jackson said. “Gun violence has been an ongoing issues for decades really, but with the national organization, the events they’ve been organizing since 2018, we’ve really kind of seen a rise in people caring and people wanting to make others care and this event is — at least for me — simply about making sure that we can reinvigorate and keep that going.”
“I do think gun control has kind of fallen behind as a hot topic in legislation. I think part of that is people being desensitized to it,” Lamphier said.
Winthrop MFOL member T Mistretta said they think that gun control is “much more polarizing” than issues such as climate change.
“I feel like a lot of candidates are afraid to mention it and therefore don’t because they are trying to accrue as many votes as possible and certain people are very touchy about being able to have access to their firearms,” Mistretta said. “I think that drives away a lot of candidates [from] speaking about it and that’s probably a big reason why we haven’t heard about it.”
When it comes to combating the desensitization that can arise surrounding mass shootings, Lamphier said that “personalizing” the discussion is one of the most important things to do.
“We like to talk about our personal connections to gun control and gun violence…everyone I’ve talked to knows somebody that has experienced some kind of gun violence because it’s so rampant,” Lamphier said, adding that gun violence “became really important” to her following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, which Lamphier said she lived “twenty minutes away” from.
“Also reminding people that gun violence — while it is mass shootings — gun violence is also suicide and domestic violence and a women’s issue and an LGBTQ issue and it spans into a lot of other [areas], too,” Lamphier said.
Winthrop MFOL member Destiny Rivers said that she has also had connections to gun violence. She said her father worked at the jail where Dylann Roof was held for a time. Roof shot and killed nine people and injured one other at the Emanuel African Methodist Epsicopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.
“I think another thing that’s really important is to just keep talking about it,” Rivers said. “I think that’s the most important thing [is to] never forget it.”
Jackson discussed avoiding “burnout” when it comes to discussing gun violence and keeping people engaged in the conversation.
“It becomes a matter of looking at each individual life and recognizing that each life and each person matters and as we continue to lose more and more people, that’s more lives that were so important and so valid,” Jackson said. “They did not deserve to be snuffed out that way and we can’t continue to let it happen because it’s so much bigger and it’s so much smaller than any single mass shooting or hundreds of lives lost because each life matters…I think we’ve really lost sight of that as [gun violence] continues to be a problem.”
Mistretta said that they think that part of the issue surrounding the issue of gun control is a “fundamental misunderstanding on all accounts of what exactly gun control is.”
“Gun control is not ‘I am taking all of your guns, you can no longer have them.’ Gun control is limiting how you can get them, destroying things like the gun show loophole, background checks, stuff like that,” Mistretta said, adding that red flag laws — where a state court can be petitioned to remove firearms from someone’s possession — are “so important.”
Lamphier said that MFOL gives her “a lot of hope” about the future of gun control.
“It’s a chance for people our age to get involved,” she said.
Rivers emphasized the fact that the original March for Our Lives was started by high schoolers. “This nation-wide program and organization by students who are younger than us and that really says something about the people it doesn’t affect most of the time, which is older people,” Rivers said. “They’re not really the ones that are in the mass shootings. It’s the people our age that really care.”
During the course of the interview, the members who were present passionately discussed the consequences of school shootings and how they impact children, some as young as preschool age.
“There was a boy who wrote his mother a letter that he kept in his backpack that said ‘mommy, if something happens to me when I’m at school, I love you,’” Jackson said. “Children should not have to be scared like that.”
With much talk of legislation being needed to enact gun control, Rivers said that she thinks that the National Rifle Association is “a part of” what holds up legislation and that money and partisanship are also major issues.
“I think that money is really big in politics unfortunately, and I think that the NRA gives the government a lot of money and so [the politicians] are going to want to do what’s going to keep giving them money,” Rivers said. “I think the other issue is that…it is more than just gun violence…[gun violence] is rooted in all of the problems in our society.”
Rivers said that the position that many politicians view gun violence from is one where they can see the problem but not connect with it. “Certain lawmakers are pushing for gun control but it’s just not happening because either party divides because you have to get a certain amount of votes and if a certain amount of people don’t vote then it’s not getting pushed forward. So I think that’s the other big issue,” Rivers said.
Rivers added that the reason Winthrop MFOL does what they do is for the generations who are growing up in a world of lockdowns and active shooter drills.
“[One of the reasons] we do this is for kids [who are too young to know] what legislation is, who are supposed to be learning how to read, who cannot fight for themselves,” Rivers said.
Graphic courtesy of Winthrop MFOL
