Thousands protest for stricter gun control in US
Washington, Jun 11 (EFE).- Marches and rallies took place across the United States on Saturday to demand action on gun control in the wake of recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.
March for Our Lives (MFOL), an organization created by students who survived the February 2018 massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, said that more than 300 events were planned in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and rural areas of the Midwest and South.
The inaugural MFOL march in Washington, which took place weeks after 17 students and staff were slain at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, drew hundreds of thousands of people to the nation’s capital.
While organizers expected as many as 50,000 people to join Saturday’s protest at the Washington Monument, The Washington Post estimated that turnout was closer to 30,000 under cloudy skies and light rain.
“Today, young people around the country once again march with @AMarch4OurLives to call on Congress to pass commonsense gun safety legislation supported by the majority of Americans and gun owners. I join them by repeating my call to Congress: do something,” President Joe Biden said on Twitter.
He urged the legislature to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, among other steps.
Signs displayed at some of the rallies accused lawmakers of being bought-off by gun manufacturers and the National Rifle Association.
“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,” MFOL co-founder David Hogg said in Washington, leading the crowd in chants of “Vote them out” just blocks from the Capitol.
The shooter in Uvalde used a legally purchased AR-15 semi-automatic assault weapon to kill 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.
While a modified AR-15 was the weapon in the racially motivated murder of 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. EFE
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