Gun violence response reaches advocates from coast to coast
photo via Wikimedia Commons under creative commons license
Nearly 100 people gathered to protest gun violence in a moving vigil at Tam High School in Mill Valley California for the victims of the Parkland shooting.
February 26, 2018
In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, students and activists everywhere are gathering together and standing up to demand change.
One of the student survivors of the shooting Emma Gonzalez has gained popularity across major social platforms for her speech at a gun control rally last Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her speech criticizes the government’s response to the shooting and attitude toward the gun violence issue.
“Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have ever been done to prevent this, we call BS,” Gonzalez said. “They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS.”
Aside from publicly speaking out, there are two major events that are being facilitated by the kids of Parkland Florida and their supporters: the National School Walkout and the March for Our Lives.
The National School Walkout will take place on March 14 at 10:00 a.m. Students everywhere are asked to get up and walk out of their school for 17 minutes — 1 minute for each person who died in the Florida shooting.
The March For our Lives is still in the planning process. As of right now, the plan is to hold a March on Washington on Mar. 24.
On NBC’s Meet the Press, another one of the shooting survivors Alex Wind spoke out about the march.
“We’re marching because it’s not just schools,” Wind said. “It’s movie theaters, it’s concerts, it’s nightclubs. This kind of stuff can’t just happen. You know, we are marching for our lives, we’re marching for the 17 lives we lost. And we’re marching for our children’s lives and our children’s children and their children.”
The #NeverAgain movement was also organized by these students in order to allow their message to reach a broader global audience via social media, and many well-known celebrities have used it to weigh in on the situation.
The argument of gun reform remains a polarizing topic. Those in favor of stricter gun control have achieved popular attention, but have lacked sustained support over time. As of now, the legislation is unwritten and the only thing Americans know for sure is that the survivors of Parkland, Florida, will not allow their stories to be forgotten.