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‘More words and empty sympathy’: Students demand action on gun violence as US presidential candidates hunt for votes in Iowa

Keith Duggan: As mass shootings continue in the United States, gun ownership remains an issue on which Republicans and Democrats can find little common ground

Students demonstrate for stricter gun control legislation as part of a March for Our Lives rally at the Iowa state capitol building on Monday in Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Keith Duggan's face
Keith Duggan in Des Moines, Iowa
Tue Jan 9 2024 - 18:11

Iowa awoke to an old-fashioned snowstorm on Tuesday morning as the heaviest fall in two years swept across the state, causing havoc for the workaday travel plans of locals and would-be US presidents alike. Winds of over 30km/h swept through Des Moines as the city experienced a white-out, with 700 ploughs out since dawn trying to clear roads as the snow continued to fall. More than 50 car crashes were reported since the first flurry began on Monday afternoon and the school closures were general.

A planned gun-violence protest by Des Moines school students just about beat the weather. More than 300 teenagers staged classroom walk-outs and converged on the state capitol building on Monday to call for more urgent gun legislation. Their action was prompted by the latest school shooting endured by the state. On Thursday last a 17-year-old, Dylan Butler, began shooting at classmates in Perry, a town of 7,000 about 60km north of Des Moines, killing Ahmir Joliff (11) and wounding seven others, including the school principal, Dan Marburger. Butler died of self-inflicted injury.

“All we hear are more words and more empty sympathy and offerings of thoughts and prayers,” Christopher Chavez, a junior at East High School in Des Moines, said in addressing fellow students gathered outside the gold-domed capitol. “All talk and no action. Enough with the prayers. Enough with the inaction. It’s time for common-sense legislation.”

The Des Moines protest was a sombre reminder that gun violence remains what President Joe Biden described last September as “the ultimate superstorm”. As the Des Moines students gathered on Monday, Biden gave an address at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine people were killed in a 2015 mass shooting by the then 21-year-old Dylann Roof.

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“On June 17th, 2015, the beautiful souls and five survivors invited a stranger into the church to pray with them. The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison – a poison that has far too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. Oh it is, it’s a poison. Throughout our history, it has ripped our nation apart. This has no place in America. Not today, tomorrow or ever,” he said.

Nikki Haley hopes that voting in Iowa will make her the leading Republican alternative to Donald Trump. Photograph: Christian Monterrosa/AFP via Getty Images

Last September, Biden established the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in an attempt to grapple with an issue on which Republicans and Democrats can find little common ground. A Pew Research Center poll from 2023 found that while 60 per cent of Americans agreed that gun violence was “a very big problem”, people were perfectly split on whether gun ownership increased or reduced public safety.

US Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who made his name as a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, speaks at campaign stops in Iowa. Video: Getty

The proximity of the Perry shooting meant that the two most prominent Republican candidates have addressed the issue while campaigning in Iowa.

“We are really with you as much as anyone can be: it’s a very terrible thing that happened,” Donald Trump said in a podium address in Sioux Center on Saturday.

Donald Trump. Photograph: Tannen Maury/AFP via Getty Images

“It’s just terrible to see that happening. So surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward. But to the relatives and to all of the people that are so devastated to the point they can’t breathe, they can’t live, we are with you all the way and love you and cherish you,” he said.

Nikki Haley, who is hoping to emerge from next Monday evening’s caucuses as the most plausible Republican alternative to Trump, reflected on an elementary school shooting in Townville, when she was governor of South Carolina. “The second that went up on TV, every one of our hearts fell,” she said of the Perry shooting.

“If we want to stop seeing this on TV, we have to do the hard things and acknowledge the cancer that is mental health,” she added. “The problem is we don’t have enough therapists in this country. Eighty per cent of mass shooters have been found to be going through a mental health crisis when it happened.”

Both Haley and Trump are to participate in separate televised appearances, hosted by CNN and Fox respectively, in Des Moines on Wednesday night. It remains to be seen how prominently the subject of gun violence features – and if the candidates address it with the same directness as the city’s students.

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