Photo via Change the Ref/YouTube
June 23, 2021, 11:28 am*
Former NRA president and current “gun rights” activist David Keene was told he was doing a rehearsal for a graduation speech to the 2021 class from the James Madison Academy, named after the man who is credited with proposing the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. constitution. The thing is, there is no James Madison Academy and it was not a rehearsal. The 3,044 empty chairs that Keene gave his speech to represented the 3,044 school children who were killed by gun violence in the 2020-2021 school year.
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The prank and the resulting video was created by Change the Ref, a gun safety organization founded by the parents of one of the victims of the Parkland school shooting in 2018, Manuel and Patricia Oliver. It plays parts of Keene’s speech while panning over the thousands of empty white seats interspersed with clips from harrowing calls from kids and parents during active school shootings.
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The result is powerful and might be disturbing to some viewers, particularly the gunshots at the end:
“An overwhelming majority of you will go on to college, while others may decide their dream dictates a different route to success,” said Keene to students who will definitely not be able to go to college or pursue dreams. “My advice to you is simple enough: follow your dream and make it a reality.”
The dream Keene was talking about seemed to be a universal desire to fight against gun control measures that he assumed the students shared.
“This year you’ve focused on one of the most important of Madison’s amendments: The Second Amendment,” he said. “There are some who will continue to fight to gut the Second Amendment, but I’d be willing to bet that many of you will be among those who stand up and prevent those from proceeding.”
According to BuzzFeed, Keene and pro-gun activist John Lott, who was also invited to speak, were not informed that they had been bamboozled and instead were told that the graduation had been canceled. Lott, at least, was unaware that the whole thing was meant to make him and Keene look like terrible people until BuzzFeed called him for comment.
“You’re telling me the whole thing was a setup?” he said. “No, I didn’t know that.”
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A second video plays Lott’s speech as text reveals that the activist has said that “universal background checks would not have stopped a single mass shooting this century.”
“Ironically, had the men conducted a proper background check on the school, they would have seen that the school is fake,” said a Change the Ref spokesperson.
The final video features Manuel and Patricia Oliver as they explain why they put together the fake graduation and made these videos. Their son Joaquin was set to graduate in the year when he was killed by the Parkland shooter, and just like with every other mass shooting, the federal government failed to respond with the passage of any meaningful gun control legislation.
The Olivers are fighting for universal background checks that could prevent dangerous individuals from purchasing firearms and are using these videos to once again bring attention to this still-unaddressed problem as well as their Change.org petition.
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They also hope to support all the parents who are this year going through what they did the summer after they lost their own son to gun violence.
“We lost Joaquin three months before his graduation. We know exactly the feeling of being there and receiving the diploma without your kid being there,” said Manuel. “Because we understand that, we know there are a lot of people going through that same experience right now.”
*First Published: June 23, 2021, 11:27 am
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