Like millions of others around the world, I was very impressed with the student-led March for Our Lives against senseless gun violence on March 24. And as a former vice president of the ABC Television Network, I applaud CGTN Global Watch’s coverage of it, which was some of the best foreign news and analysis I’ve seen lately.  

CGTN captured the emotions of the crowd while dispassionately presenting the sordid facts and the numerous reasons why people in the US need to take action to reduce the senseless maiming  bloody-clawed monster National Rifle Association (NRA) responsible for an almost daily diet of death and injuries. What a contrast with our lives in China where crossing the street is the biggest daily danger we are likely to encounter! 

The the catalyst for the main March in Washington and in more than 800 venues on every continent except Antarctica (Thankfully penguins only need worry about Killer Whales and not human killers!) were the 17 killings in the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Valentine’s Day. However, as Global Watch pointed out in 2017 alone there were 52,000 shooting cases, 13,158 deaths and 27,000 injuries.

As Global Watch also pointed out President Trump has been all over the map on gun violence issues but unsurprisingly has exercised no leadership on this issue. While he eagerly addressed the Washington March for Life on January 19 saying that every life was sacred, he was conspicuously absent in the March for Our Lives, instead playing golf at Mar-a-Lago. 

He could have at least taken the short ride to any one of a dozen affiliated rallies near his Palm Beach neighborhood. It would have been especially poignant if he had gone to the site of the shooting, a mere 60 km away – minutes by helicopter. While Trump seems to be recklessly unafraid to start various kinds of wars with China, Iran and North Korea, it seems that he’s deathly afraid of the NRA. 

The NRA began in the 19th century as a gun safety organization, but in the 1970s in a bloodless coup by radical conservative Republicans and anti-government libertarians morphed into a militant single-issue gun rights lobby. 

The NRA is so powerful that it strikes fear into the heart of any public official who dares oppose it. The NRA has two major tools: a huge treasury to shower compliant officials with campaign contributions, and a well-publicized report card grading how officials voted on key NRA issues. Even if one vehemently opposes their position, you have to admire their lean, mean take-no-prisoners model that in four decades has made them into a lethal career-killing machine to those who oppose them.

Aside from murdering virtually every meaningful gun safety law, the NRA's most game-changing accomplishment was to get the US Supreme Court in 2008 to overturn two centuries of constitutional law. The court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms applied not only to governments, but to individuals. They’ve also succeeded in banning federally-funded gun violence research for more than two decades, and as such are on record as not wanting to address the underlying issues.

To show just how depraved the NRA is, consider their reaction to the March for Our Lives. They said that the best way to fight gun violence was for the students to join the NRA. It’s akin to asking a sheep to join a wolf pack for protection. They further stated that the "protests aren't spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to destroy the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones." 

NRA TV, their online mouthpiece even featured a video that called this noble effort “a march for their lies”. In my view all they’ve achieved is to destroy the fabric of American society and our right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

I wish the students well. I am sure that some of these members of Generation Z, some old enough to vote, have already made a difference that us older folk couldn’t manage to achieve. Still with about one gun for every American man, woman and child, my heart bleeds for America knowing that this scourge will likely never be resolved in my lifetime, and probably in theirs. 

(Harvey Dzodin is a former legal adviser in Carter administration and a research fellow of the Center for China and Globalization. The article reflects the author's opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.)