“Six years ago, I was a senior at Parkland. Many students and teachers were murdered on Valentine’s Day that year by a person using an AR-15 assault rifle,” the voice says.“It’s been six years, and you’ve done nothing. Not a thing to stop all the shootings that have continued to happen since.”
“The thing is, I died that day in Parkland,” the voice continues. “My body was destroyed by a weapon of war. I’m back today because my parents used AI to recreate my voice to call you.”
That voice was the voice of Joaquin Oliver who was 17 when he was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Parents of students killed at other schools and some other gun victims have also joined the effort to bring the voices of their loved ones back in the public eye as they work to get changes in gun laws across the country.
The new campaign marks a new push by parents to be recognized for their loss, and to use it to change minds and the laws around the country.
“My wife and I have been trying to use our voices for the last six years. Nonstop. We have tried almost every single way to approach gun violence in a way that people will pay attention. We haven’t been very successful,” Manuel Oliver told CNN, who founded the Change the Ref advocacy group in memory of his son after the 2018 shooting in Florida.
“So we decided, you know what? Let’s bring the voices of our loved ones. Let’s bring the voice of Joaquin.”
Another voice is that of Uzi Garcia.
“I love video games, telling jokes and making my friends laugh and jumping on the trampoline with my family,” Uzi’s AI-generated voice says in his message. “I’m a fourth grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Or at least I was when a man with an AR-15 came into my school and killed 18 of my classmates, two teachers, and me. That was almost two years ago. Nothing has changed. Even more shootings have happened.”
His father spent hours going through audio of his son to make sure it sounded just right.
“It was bittersweet because we get to hear his voice again,” he says. “But he should be here to speak for himself, and he’s not. So we have to get more and more creative to get these politicians to listen to us.”
The campaign allows people to listen to the voices and then plug in their zip code so the message will be sent to the right Congressional office.
Some have called the messages unethical and “ghoulish” but let’s ask this one question: what is more ghoulish than a classroom shot full of rounds that tore elementary school bodies apart?
Meanwhile in Charleston, S.C., “The Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, senior pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church — known worldwide as Mother Emanuel — had prayed for the words to counsel his members through America’s ceaseless violence. They were all aware, intimately so, that the worst can happen and nothing much changes,” according to The New York Times.
“Since the start of January, the United States has counted six mass killings, its rate of firearm-wrought bloodshed outpacing every other wealthy nation by far. The candidates vying for the GOP nomination, if they address the carnage at all, make no mention of safeguarding access to the weapons used in attack after attack after attack.
“Donald Trump and Nikki Haley’s comments on the campaign trail have troubled Manning and others close to Mother Emanuel, many of whom have lobbied for stronger background checks, a policy shift most Americans support, only to meet resistance from conservative leaders. The familiar disappointment crept back when, just as the Republican contenders were descending on Iowa for its caucuses, a teenager not far from Des Moines staged the first school rampage of 2024. Meet-and-greets resumed before the dead were buried.
“Haley, the former South Carolina governor, had offered the most detailed policy solution: funding more mental health care — though, she said, the states would have to pay for it. The pastor doubted that approach on its own would make a dent in the country’s daily death toll.
“Trump, meanwhile, was calling himself “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House.” As president, he briefly considered tightening background checks in 2019 after gunmen in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, killed 31 people over one August weekend. Then, under pressure from the National Rifle Association, he scrapped that idea, saying, “A lot of the people who put me where I am are strong supporters of the Second Amendment.” These days, he boasted about doing nothing — literally, the pastor lamented.
“During my four years, nothing happened,” Trump told a gathering of NRA members this month in Pennsylvania. “And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing.”
His remarks at a northeast Iowa rally one day after the school shooting in rural Perry killed an 11-year-old boy and the high school principal had landed like salt in the Mother Emanuel congregation’s psychic wound. It was “so surprising” and “just terrible,” Trump said before adding, “but we have to get over it.”
We have to get over it? Is that the best we can do as a society, just get over it?
Is the best we can do as a society to boast “We did nothing.”
Is the best we can do as a society is throw up our hands and say there’s nothing we can do, it’s the crazy ones we have to watch out for?
Our best just doesn’t seem to be enough, does it.
— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.