Sarah Chadwick, a high school student who survived the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 of her peers and teachers last month, published a video takedown of a recent advertisement from the National Rifle Association (NRA) to promote March for Our Lives, a student-led demonstration to demand stricter gun laws that will be held in Washington, D.C. on March 24.
In the response video posted on Twitter, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student addresses "every government official unwilling to take action and make change"--particularly those with A+ ratings from the NRA--the gun industry's lobbyists, and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch. Chadwick declares: "To every spokeswoman with an hourglass who uses free speech to alter and undermine what our flag represents... Your time is running out. The clock starts now."
Chadwick's video comes as a direct rebuke to Loesch's latest controversial advertisement for the NRA--this is not her first--in which the spokeswoman said: "To every lying member of the media, to every Hollywood phony, to the role model athletes who use their free speech to alter and undermine what our flag represents... Your time is running out. The clock starts now."
While Loesch's ad has been widely condemned beyond the NRA community, Chadwick's response was celebrated.
Chadwick is just one of the several students who survived the shooting and has since begun calling for gun control legislation at the state and federal levels. As Helaine Olen wrote for the Washington Post this week, "the student survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have built what has turned into the most vital gun-control movement that the United States has seen in decades... They let us know the adults had been failing them for a long time."
Chadwick took to Twitter after sharing the video to give a shout-out to the other students who helped with the production.
