Why Gun Laws May Finally Change: Kids Are Leading

Children have periodically played leading roles in social and political movements. With #NeverAgain, some of the students who survived the shooting this month in Parkland, Florida, have organized effective social media campaigns in favor of greater gun control. So far the American public is paying attention. A look back at the broader history of child activism indicates that some major social change might actually be upon us.

In the early 20th century, the union organizer Mother Jones led a strike and then organized a few hundred child laborers on a march from Philadelphia to New York. Historians have considered the “children’s crusade of 1903” a milestone in the fight to abolish child labor. As soon as a year later, Pennsylvania toughened its child labor laws. Federal action came later, during the New Deal.