Written by Michael Wines, Anne Barnard, Sean Keenan, Dave Montgomery and Meghann M. Cuniff
After Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; Parkland, Florida; Newtown, Connecticut; El Paso, Texas, and tons of of different mass shootings over the previous 20 years, hundreds of protesters rallied in opposition to gun violence Saturday in Washington, D.C., and different cities throughout the nation.
With their indicators, chants and mere presence, they condemned the drumbeat of mass shootings within the United States and renewed a name — up to now, a futile one — for federal laws to restrict using the military-style weapons which have made a lot of them doable. Many vowed to struggle the inaction on the polls.
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“I’ll be taking your thoughts and prayers to the ballot box,” learn an indication carried by Maria Vorel, 67, on the Washington Monument.
The Washington rally was briefly thrown into panic when, after a second of silence for the Uvalde capturing victims, a person threw an unidentified object into the gang. Hundreds sprinted away from the rally stage after the person apparently shouted, “I am the gun,” native tv station WUSA reported.
A speaker shortly calmed the gang by shouting into the microphone, “Please do not run! There is no issue here!” U.S. Park Police officers detained the person. A Park Police spokesperson stated no weapons had been discovered, and the person’s motive was not recognized. He was charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting a gathering and was launched with a quotation, the spokesperson stated.
A caravan of some 6,000 migrants, a lot of them from Venezuela and intending to succeed in the United States, traverses Tapachula, Mexico, close to the border with Guatemala, on June 6, 2022. (Alejandro Cegarra/The New York Times)
The demonstrations, organized by March for Our Lives, had been a reprise of rallies sponsored by the coed group that drew tons of of hundreds of individuals in 2018, after the bloodbath at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
This time, the demonstration in Washington adopted one capturing final month at a Buffalo grocery store that left 10 Black individuals lifeless and one other at an elementary faculty in Uvalde that killed 19 schoolchildren and two lecturers.
The Saturday protests unfolded in tons of of cities throughout the nation and at a smattering of places in Europe.
Here are just a few scenes from rallies across the nation.
Washington, D.C.
They dressed for the event.
The hundreds who rallied on a uncommon cool, damp June day wore their message on their T-shirts: “Disarm Hate”; “Actually, guns do kill people”; “Moms Demand Action.”
Jeremy Brandt-Vorel, a 32-year-old advertising and marketing knowledgeable from Alexandria, Virginia, and the son of Maria Vorel, remembered hiding within the bushes at his bus cease in 2002, when two males terrorized the Washington space with a sequence of lethal sniper assaults.
“I think a majority of Americans want common-sense gun control, but they’re not represented in Congress,” he stated.
Sarah Kirkland, a 17-year-old senior at John R. Lewis High School in Springfield, Virginia, stated she had been working towards classroom lockdown drills since kindergarten. And she was uninterested in it.
“When the Sandy Hook shooting happened” in 2012, “I was the age of the victims,” she stated. Now, she stated, exasperated, she is a few months youthful than the Uvalde gunman.
“It’s ridiculous.”
New York City
About 1,000 individuals marched throughout the Brooklyn Bridge from Cadman Plaza to an space tucked among the many towers of New York’s Financial District that hosted the Occupy Wall Street protests a decade in the past.
The protesters, together with a marching band sporting white-plumed hats, stated their aim was to show a motion into an influence bloc that would obtain affordable firearms limits.
“Enough is enough,” they chanted, punctuating speeches that included a one-line oration from a 9-year-old: “Please don’t shoot when I’m learning.”
People attend a March For Our Lives demonstration in opposition to gun violence in Albany, N.Y., Saturday, June 11, 2022. More than 300 rallies had been scheduled within the nation on Saturday. (Cindy Schultz/The New York Times)
Roxand Tucker, 48, and Angelina Tucker, 52, who’re sisters, had marched earlier than, in Central Park, after the Parkland faculty capturing. “It’s outrageous that we’re still doing this,” stated Roxand Tucker, a instructor for 14 years at Ditmas Park Middle School in Brooklyn. “Baffling, actually.”
Atlanta
Julvonnia McDowell, 43, misplaced her 14-year-old son in 2016, after he was shot “by a 13-year-old who gained access to an unsecured firearm.”
McDowell got here with tons of of others to Ebenezer Baptist Church, the place Martin Luther King Jr. as soon as led the congregation, to demand limits on firearms that might maintain others from experiencing the ache she has felt.
“People can imagine it, but they’re not living it,” she stated.
Joe Scott, 37, a social employee and U.S. Army veteran, and Caylynn Scott, a 34-year-old educator, got here to protest from Tyrone, Georgia, about an hour exterior Atlanta, with their 3-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter. Scott, who was pregnant with one other baby, stated every faculty capturing made going to class even scarier.
Pushing a double stroller with tiny legs dangling out the entrance, the Scotts held an indication that learn, “We march for THEIR lives.”
San Antonio
As Frank Ruiz, 41, watched information accounts of the capturing in close by Uvalde, he stated his 8-year-old daughter peppered him with questions: “How could this happen?” “Has this ever happened before?” And lastly: “What can we do about it?”
That led Ruiz, a monetary providers worker and father of three, to affix tons of of others for a march from San Antonio’s Milam Park to City Hall. He additionally addressed the gang.
“I’m one of you,” he stated. “I’m a dad and I’m pissed off and scared and tired of guns.”
Danna Halff, whose household owns a ranch not removed from Uvalde, stated her husband gave her a rifle for his or her anniversary. But she known as on the gang to induce state leaders to again new limits on who can purchase and use assault weapons.
“It happened again,” she stated of the tragedy in Uvalde, “and it keeps happening.”
Los Angeles
Several hundred individuals rallied exterior Los Angeles City Hall earlier than marching by means of downtown in help of latest gun restrictions. Heather Stephenson, 58, traveled from San Bernardino, California, the positioning of a 2015 mass capturing that killed 14 individuals, to the rally with an indication that learn “Enough is Enough” on one aspect and “Sane Gun Laws” on the opposite.
“You’ve got to keep contact with people who are in power, and you’ve got to keep pressure on them,” stated Stephenson, who retired from public faculty educating June 3.
Rosemary Soliz, 41, who had joined previous gun-violence protests, introduced her 10-month-old son, Diego Tinajero, to the Los Angeles occasion. It was the primary time she had taken considered one of her youngsters along with her.
“As a mom, it just really is bothering me more right now,” she stated. “We just want something to get done. We’re tired of the same thing happening over and over again.”