CBS Evening News used its B-block on Monday to speak with members of March for Our Lives, the radically anti-gun group that was founded by high school students after the shooting in Parkland, Florida. Together, the students and CBS reporter Adriana Diaz whined about the lack of progress on their efforts to push gun control.
Floundering anchor Norah O’Donnell began the segment by touting how “the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida sparked some of the largest youth-led protests since the Vietnam War. Young survivors changed America's gun debate, but in a conversation today with Adriana Diaz, they say real change has yet to come.”
Diaz began by introducing the audience to Delaney Tarr, who she noted was a “Parkland survivor-turned social activist.” After Diaz reported that Tarr “helped start March for Our Lives, the national movement against gun violence that grew out of last year’s school massacre,” she erroneously declared that “566 mass shootings” have occurred since the group was founded.
That statistic was an absolute lie. By no reliable and/or reasonable measure have there been that many mass shootings. It was a statistic cooked up by anti-gun special interest groups trying to scare people into banning guns. If that number were true, then CBS News would be failing to do their jobs because they’ve only reported on a fraction of a fraction of them.
Diaz prompted Tarr and two other group members to share how it felt to continue to see mass shootings happen despite their efforts:
TARR: It almost feels like we keep shouting into this nothingness because nobody’s listening. Lawmakers aren't listening, but this is quite literally life or death.
RYAN SERVAITES: Every day we wait is another life lost.
TREVOR WILD: Students are sick and tired of planning vigils. Like, these are 15, 16, 17-year-olds, and they're experts at vigil planning.
“They’ve taken that responsibility on the road, registering 50,000 voters for the mid-terms and even helped pass a universal background bill in the House in February that stalled in the Senate,” Diaz added.
Diaz then played soundbites of the young activists lashing out at their opposition:
WILD: Right now, it's up to Mitch McConnell to bring that to a vote in the Senate and to get it into law.
TARR: We've seen so much lack of action. [SCREEN WIPE] I am angry. I am filled with rage. And I would like to see it get done.
“They say they won't stop until the violence stops,” Diaz boastfully concluded.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CBS Evening News
August 5, 2019
6:48:04 p.m. EasternNORAH O’DONNELL: Nearly a year and a half before the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida sparked some of the largest youth-led protests since the Vietnam War. Young survivors changed America's gun debate, but in a conversation today with Adriana Diaz, they say real change has yet to come.
[Cuts to video]
DELANEY TARR: My heart is so exhausted. It's so much for all of us to have to keep dealing with this over and over and know that as hard as we fight, it continues the happen.
ADRIANA DIAZ: 19-year-old Delaney Tarr is a Parkland survivor turned social activist.
TARR: We're in the here for breadcrumbs. We're here for real change.
DIAZ: She helped start March for Our Lives, the national movement against gun violence that grew out of last year’s school massacre. There have been 566 mass shootings since.
How do you feel when you see these shootings happen over and over again, when you guys set out to stop this?
TARR: It almost feels like we keep shouting into this nothingness because nobody’s listening. Lawmakers aren't listening, but this is quite literally life or death.
RYAN SERVAITES: Every day we wait is another life lost.
TREVOR WILD: Students are sick and tired of planning vigils. Like, these are 15, 16, 17-year-olds, and they're experts at vigil planning.
DIAZ: Tarr, 16-year-old Ryan Servaites, and 21-year-old Trevor Wild invited us to their headquarters in Florida.
TARR: Every time we see another shooting, it's this mixture of defeat, of anger, of renewed spirit.
DIAZ: When you say the word "defeat," what do you mean by that?
TARR: There is a certain level of personal responsibility that a lot of us feel every time we find out somebody else has died at the hand of a gun.
DIAZ: They’ve taken that responsibility on the road, registering 50,000 voters for the mid-terms and even helped pass a universal background bill in the House in February that stalled in the Senate.
WILD: Right now it's up to Mitch McConnell to bring that to a vote in the Senate and to get it into law.
TARR: We've seen so much lack of action. [Transition] I am angry. I am filled with rage. And I would like to see it get done.
DIAZ: They say they won't stop until the violence stops. Adriana Diaz, CBS News, Parkland, Florida.
