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Washington: After recent deadly mass shootings from Uvalde in Texas, to Buffalo in New York rocked the United States, thousands of people took to streets across the country on Saturday in a renewed push for gun control measures. Activists said that recent killings should compel Congress to act. During the march in Washington, speaker after speaker called on senators, who are seen as a major impediment to legislation, to act or face being voted out of office, especially given the shock to the nation’s conscience after 19 children and two teachers were killed May 24 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
“Enough is enough,” District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser told the second March for Our Lives rally in her city, according to a report by Associated Press. “I speak as a mayor, a mom, and I speak for millions of Americans and America’s mayors who are demanding that Congress do its job. And its job is to protect us, to protect our children from gun violence,” she said.
Survivors of mass shootings and other incidents of gun violence also participated in the rallies to narrate their horrific ordeal and demanding proper legislations to gun control.
People participate in the second March for Our Lives rally in support of gun control Saturday, June 11, 2022, in Washington. (Photo/AP)
“If our government can’t do anything to stop 19 kids from being killed and slaughtered in their own school, and decapitated, it’s time to change who is in government,” said David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting that killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A co-founder of the March For Our Lives organization that was created after that shooting and held its first rally in Washington not long afterward, Hogg led the crowd in chants of “Vote them out.”
Another Parkland survivor and group co-founder, X Gonzalez, delivered an impassioned, profanity-laced plea to Congress for change. “We are being murdered,” they screamed and implored Congress to “act your age, not your shoe size.”
Protesters march down Jefferson Avenue at the site of the Tops massacre during a March for Our Lives rally in support of gun control, Saturday, June 11, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y. (Photo/AP)
Yolanda King, granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr also took part in the march and said: “This time is different because this isn’t about politics. It’s about morality. Not right and left, but right and wrong, and that doesn’t just mean thoughts and prayers. That means courage and action.”
Hundreds also gathered at an amphitheater in Parkland, where high school athletic director Chris Hixon, died in the shooting and in San Antonio, about 85 miles east of Uvalde, where marchers chanted “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go.”
The US House has passed bills to raise the age limit to buy semi-automatic weapons and establish federal “red flag” laws. A bipartisan group of senators had hoped to reach agreement this week on a framework for addressing the issue and held talks Friday, but no deal was announced.
People participate in the second March for Our Lives rally in support of gun control in front of the Washington Monument, Saturday, June 11, 2022, in Washington. (Photo/AP)
President Joe Biden, who was in California when the Washington rally began, said his message to demonstrators was “keep marching” and added that he is “mildly optimistic” about legislative negotiations to address gun violence. Biden recently delivered an impassioned address to the nation in which he called for several steps, including raising the age limit for buying assault-style weapons.
