Hundreds of thousands in US demand tighter gun controls
We can and we will change the world, March For Our Lives protesters say
Hundreds of thousands of Americans galvanized by last month’s Florida school massacre rallied yesterday at nationwide March For Our Lives protests led by students demanding tighter gun laws.
Carrying signs with slogans including “If they choose guns over our kids, vote them out,” protesters in Washington jammed Pennsylvania Avenue as students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where 17 people were killed called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue.
The massive rallies aim to break a legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become frighteningly common.
“Politicians: either represent the people or get out. Stand with us or beware, the voters are coming,” Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old junior at the high school, told the crowd.
Another Parkland survivor, David Hogg, said the sun was shining on a new day. “You can hear the people in power shaking,” he said to loud applause.
“We’re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians, but as Americans. Because this - this is not cutting it,” he said, pointing at the white-domed Capitol. “We can and we will change the world!” More than 800 demonstrations were set to take place in the US and around the world.
Summoned by student survivors of the Florida school shooting, tens of thousands of people poured into the nation’s capital and cities across America yesterday to march for gun control and ignite political activism among the young.
Organisers of the March for Our Lives rally in Washington hoped their protest would match in numbers and spirit last year’s women’s march, one of the biggest protests in the capital since the Vietnam era and one that far exceeded predictions of 300,000 demonstrators.
Bearing signs reading “We Are the Change,” ‘’No More Silence” and “Keep NRA Money Out of Politics,” protesters lined Pennsylvania Avenue from the stage near the Capitol, stretching back toward the White House. The route also takes in the Trump International Hotel.
President Donald Trump was in Florida for the weekend. A motorcade took him to his West Palm Beach golf club in the morning.
Large rallies also took shape in such cities as Boston, Houston, Minneapolis and Parkland, Florida, the site of the February 14 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead. The police presence was heavy as more than 20,000 people filled a park near the Florida school, chanting slogans such as “Enough is enough” and carrying signs that read “Why do your guns matter more than our lives?” and “Our ballots will stop bullets.”
Gun violence was fresh for some in the Washington crowd: Ayanne Johnson of Great Mills High School in Maryland held a sign declaring, “I March for Jaelynn,” honouring Jaelynn Willey, who died on Thursday two days after being shot by a classmate at the school. A boy was injured in the attack, and the shooter died.
Rallying outside the New Hampshire Statehouse in Concord, 17-year-old Leeza Richter said: “Our government will do more to stop us from walking out than it will to stop a gunman from walking in.”
Since the bloodshed in Florida, students have tapped into a current of gun control sentiment that has been building for years — yet still faces a powerful counterpoint from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its supporters.
Tipping point
Organisers hope the passions of the crowds and the under-18 roster of speakers will translate into a tipping point starting with the midterm congressional elections this fall.
The protesters, many of them high school students, claim that the youth leadership of this initiative is what will set it apart from previous attempts to enact stronger gun-control legislation.
In Atlanta, Lindsey Alexander, a freshman at Decatur High School in Decatur, Georgia, attended her first protest, inspired by hearing Parkland students debate the NRA on television.
“If nothing changes, we’re going to continue to have school shootings,” she said. “I understand the Second Amendment is important. We’ve always had this right. But when the Founding Fathers put that right in place, they didn’t mean it to become what it is today.”
Polls indicate that public opinion nationwide may be shifting on an issue that has simmered for generations, and through dozens of mass shootings.
A new poll conducted by The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 69 per cent of Americans think gun laws in the US should be tightened.