In the course of my career, I’ve seen and heard some pretty unhinged things. For example, the left pretending the Republican softball team being the target of a mass shooting by a Bernie Bro wasn’t domestic terrorism was right up there.
And some people get a platform despite having only a tenuous grasp on reality.
One such soul is Manuel Oliver. While he’s far from the only Parkland Parent to get a platform, his has been used constantly for more and more bizarre antics, such as using potentially illegal AI-created voices of shooting victims to try and guilt lawmakers into backing gun control and even getting kicked out of a White House announcement for gun control efforts.
His latest stunt doesn’t come close to suggesting he’s coming back down to Earth, either. No, if anything it’s getting worse.
Guns have been the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S. since 2020, when they surpassed car crashes.
Firearm-related child and teen mortality is 28.6 times higher in the U.S. on average than in peer countries like Canada, the U.K. and Australia. In the U.S., for every 100,000 children and teens, there are 6.01 firearm deaths. Comparatively, Canada has the second-highest firearm death mortality rate with 0.63 deaths per 100,000 children and teens.
But despite repeated calls for gun reform ranging from legislators to the parents and peers of victims, little has been done in terms of federal gun reform.
Anti-gun violence nonprofit Change the Ref’s latest campaign posits that in the face of these grim statistics, American children would be safer leaving the country to live in safer nations. It opens up the conversation about U.S. gun control to a global audience with a mock plea to adopt American children.
A campaign film, titled Save us from the USA, shows a series of black-and-white AI-generated photos of young children resembling school portraits, and urges viewers from other countries to “please save American children from the USA — consider adopting an American child.”
“This is a matter of asking for help; it’s like having a war in your country and asking other countries to help you,” said Change the Ref cofounder Manuel Oliver, who created the organization with his wife Patricia after the death of their son Juaquin in the 2018 mass shooting at Parkland high school.
“Now it’s our turn. We are an arrogant country that will never ask for help, but things are changing,” he added. “We’re not capable or don’t want to solve the problem, so we need other people to get involved and help us.”
It’s really not asking for help. It’s unhinged grandstanding by the world leader at this point.
Yes, I get that it’s supposedly an unserious call, but does Oliver or anyone else at Change the Ref think that this is really going to make a difference? The international community doesn’t really get a say in what the United States does internally, so reaching out to them accomplishes absolutely nothing. People who support gun rights now aren’t going to suddenly change their opinions because of this.
Instead, all Oliver and company have done is illustrate that they have no interest in being taken seriously.
This doesn’t address the very real problems taking place in American inner cities, where the vast majority of the violent crime is taking place, for example. It should be noted that most of those locations are far more anti-gun than the rural communities, and most of the largest cities with the worst problems are also large enough to dominate state politics. They have gun control and they have rampant homicide rates.
I know the man lost his kid in Parkland. As a father myself, I can’t even imagine what that must be like.
But at some point, you don’t get to use that as an excuse to make an idiot out of yourself, even among some of your own allies. Mockery has its place, but all Change the Ref has done is make sure they’re the ones worthy of that mockery going forward.
It’s absolutely pathetic.
