The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
“I got my baby back. But what about those 17 people, their parents, their loved ones? What do they have to go through?” she asked. “The laws need to change and need to change now.
“Listen to the kids,” Llewellyn said. “I’m standing with my daughter. She’s here for Nicholas. She hid under his body. She’s here to represent him.”
Saturday’s march is the latest event organized by the Stoneman Douglas students, who have launched the largest US grassroots movement for gun control seen in decades.
Under the banner #ENOUGH, tens of thousands of students walked out of classrooms across the country on March 14 to protest against gun violence.
David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student, said another school walkout was being planned for April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, which left 13 people dead.
Hogg said it is time for lawmakers to take on the powerful US gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA).
“Either you stand with the kids or you stand with the NRA,” Hogg said. “And we’re asking people to put the USA over the NRA.”
A slew of American celebrities have pledged $500,000 donations to support Saturday’s march.
They include actor George Clooney and his wife, Amal, a human rights lawyer; actress and media mogul Oprah Winfrey; director Steven Spielberg and his actress wife, Kate Capshaw; and film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and his wife, Marilyn.
– ‘A new social movement’ –
Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, where 20 children aged six and seven years old were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, praised the students on Thursday for their activism.
“We are in the midst of a new social movement, much like the civil rights movement, marriage equality movement, the anti-war movement,” Blumenthal said.
I’m so glad that I will be given platforms to address the elephant in the room. Gun Violence isn’t new! ESPECIALLY in Black communities. I will not beat around the bush because it’s been put on the back burner for too long! Yes I go to MSD, but I am also a PROUD Young Black Woman
— Aalayah Eastmond (@AalayahEastmond) March 18, 2018
“That has always been the way change, particularly revolutionary change, has been accomplished in this country,” he said.
Blumenthal, an outspoken advocate for tougher gun control laws, ridiculed President Donald Trump’s proposal to arm teachers.
“Armed teachers is toxic lunacy,” he said. “What kind of country are we that says the new normal is bulletproof backpacks and armed teachers?”
Since the Parkland shooting, the state of Florida and the US Congress have made only modest tweaks to gun laws.
They have failed to adopt legislation promoted by gun control advocates such as a ban on assault rifles and expanded background checks which would cover all gun purchases, even private sales.
