As politicians show skepticism about the feasibility of toughening gun control laws, New York students took to the streets to demand as their banners read: “Enough.”
After holding a moment of silence for each of the 10 victims of the deadly racially motivated shooting in Buffalo, Luis held back tears as he read the names of the 19 innocent children gunned down in Ubalde, Texas.
“Reading the names and seeing the faces of little children of eight, nine and ten years old is very painful. I feel it as a young person, I have a nine-year-old sister and it could have been her,” said Luis Fernandez, executive director, Youth Over Guns. “There are laws that we can pass. This does not have to be our normal life, we can change the conditions of our schools and our communities and stop this violence.”
Grateful that guns are more difficult to acquire in New York than in other states across the country, the community is demanding change at the federal level.
“Although here the probability that this passes through state laws is very low, I would like to see it at the federal level because we have relatives in all places of the same age and it hurts me to see that their children were victims of such an event. This leads 40 years since the first Columbine shooting,” said Jennifer Umaña, one of those attending the rally.
Including a ban on the sale of automatic, semi-automatic and high-caliber weapons, which both gunmen, who at 18 cannot buy alcohol, legally acquired.
“A handgun maybe if you need to defend yourself at home, but such a giant rifle shouldn’t be legal,” said Marco Vargas, another attendee.
This is just one of several protests scheduled for this weekend to draw lawmakers’ attention to the need to do something to control the flow of guns into our communities.
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