Thousands across U.S. rally for gun reform: ‘Your inaction is killing Americans’
Global News
Gun safety group A March for Our Lives says rallies are expected in Washington and across U.S. to urge politicians to improve gun control laws
Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected to rally in Washington, D.C., and across the country on Saturday, calling on lawmakers to pass legislation aimed at curbing gun violence following last month’s massacre at a Texas elementary school.
March for Our Lives (MFOL), the gun safety group founded by student survivors of the 2018 massacre at a Parkland, Florida, high school, said it has planned more than 450 rallies for Saturday, including in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The organization’s 2018 march on Washington, weeks after 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, brought hundreds of thousands of people to the nation’s capital to pressure Congress to take legislative action, though Republican opposition has prevented any new limits on guns from passing the U.S. Senate.
U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat who earlier this month urged Congress to ban assault weapons, expand background checks and implement other gun control measures, said he supported Saturday’s protests.
“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,” Biden said in a Twitter post. “I join them by repeating my call to Congress: do something.”
This year’s event in Washington has a simple message to political leaders, according to organizers: Your inaction is killing Americans.
“We will no longer allow you to sit back while people continue to die,” Trevon Bosley, an MFOL board member, said in an emailed statement.
A gunman in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children and two teachers on May 24, 10 days after another gunman murdered 10 Black people in a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a racist attack.
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