Bernice King Urges Permanent School Strike Until Assault Weapons Ban Is Passed

Rights advocate Bernice King, a daughter of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, expressed hope on the 55th anniversary of her father's assassination Tuesday that U.S. students leading gun control demonstrations will take inspiration from civil rights protesters who forced change through prolonged direct action.

King applauded more than 7,000 students in Nashville who marched to the Tennessee State Capitol on Monday, condemning Republican lawmakers who have claimed anti-LGBTQ+ laws will "protect" the state's children while refusing to take up gun control legislation after the mass shooting last month at the Covenant School, which killed three children and three adults.

"This issue that they're standing tall in is well past being addressed," King toldThe Hill on Tuesday.

The group Students Demand Action is also organizing a nationwide school walkout for Wednesday.

"The only thing that I wish, and I've said this before across the nation as I've talked to different audiences, I wish there was a way to really organize them in a way that their walkout is not a day, but it's the Montgomery bus protests, that we refuse to return to school until there is some significant legislation that bans assault weapons," King said.

"I wish there was a way to really organize them in a way that their walkout is not a day, but it's the Montgomery bus protests, that we refuse to return to school until there is some significant legislation that bans assault weapons."

King's father was one of the leaders of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott that lasted from December 5, 1955 until December 20, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the city to integrate its buses.

Public pressure from groups including Students Demand Action and March for Our Lives has been credited with pushing legislators to pass the federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which included "enhanced" background checks for gun purchasers under age 21, funding for states to implement red flag laws, and provisions to stop interstate gun trafficking.

States have also passed dozens of gun control laws in recent years, but gun violence nonetheless surpassed car accidents last year as the leading cause of death for American children.

Researchers at New York University calculated last year that the risk of a person dying in a mass shooting was 70% lower when the 1994 federal assault weapons ban was in effect until 2004.

"My father was assassinated with a rifle that would be the equivalent of what we call assault weapons today, and 55 years later we're just increasing the access to these instruments," King told The Hill. "The issue is, these are deadly instruments, and we should not have them in society."

King's call for permanent school walkouts until lawmakers pass far-reaching gun control came as Highland Park High School in Highland Park, Illinois—the site of another mass shooting last year—went into lockdown due to reports that a student had a gun. The student body had participated in a walkout in solidarity with Nashville children earlier in the day.

After a mass shooting that killed 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas last May, Atlantic editor Gal Beckerman also urged a permanent school strike until the demands of the 63% of Americans who support an assault weapons ban are met.

"I'm left with one conclusion: The children and parents of our country need to take the summer to organize locally, build a set of national demands, and then refuse to go back to school in the fall until Congress does something," Beckerman wrote, explaining how the strike could force action:

One thing we've learned from the pandemic is that when children aren't in school, society strains. This would make a strike an extremely powerful form of leverage. A walkout with enough students involved and taking place over days, not minutes, puts concrete pressure on officials, from the municipal level all the way up to Washington. When students aren't in school, parents have difficulty getting to work. Suddenly understaffed services—hospitals, subways—suffer the consequences. Politicians and local officials have a mess on their hands—children falling behind in learning, parents overloaded—and a strong incentive to accede to a demand.

Republican policymakers this week have shown little tolerance for direct action by rights advocates. The Tennessee GOP filed resolutions to expel three Democrats who joined young protesters on Monday, and two Florida Democratic leaders were arrested for protesting a proposed six-week abortion ban.

"It should not have to take this kind of effort, but we're living in times where what my father did, which was to really sacrifice their very lives, sacrifice their job, sacrifice their home, sacrifice everything," said King. "We're right back at that place."