Protesters demand action on gun control

WASHINGTON－Thousands of people took to the streets in the United States on Saturday to push for action on the devastating gun violence plaguing the country, where Republican politicians have repeatedly blocked efforts to enact stricter firearms laws.

Protesters of all ages streamed onto the National Mall in Washington, where activists placed more than 45,000 white vases holding flowers, one for each person killed by a firearm in the United States in 2020.

"Protect people, not guns," said one sign held by a protester near the Washington Monument. "Fear has no place in schools," another said.

Two shootings last month, one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed, and another at a New York supermarket in which 10 black people were killed, helped spur the rallies, organized by March For Our Lives.

The student-led organization, founded by survivors of a shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, held a rally that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the nation's capital weeks after that shooting.

Four years later the demonstration was marked by frustration at the lack of progress.

"Enough is enough" rang out repeatedly from the podium, with speakers including a Parkland survivor, X Gonzalez, and Martin Luther King Jr's granddaughter Yolanda King.

The problem of gun violence in the US, in which more than 19,300 people have been killed this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, goes far beyond high-profile mass killings, with more than half of those deaths due to suicide.

'Am I next?'

Outside Washington, hundreds of other demonstrations were planned around the country on Saturday, including in Parkland, where protesters carried signs with messages such as "Am I next?"

Thousands also turned out in New York. In Brooklyn, white crosses were erected for the children killed in Uvalde and portraits of those killed in Buffalo.

Gun control advocates are calling for tighter restrictions or an outright ban on highly lethal rifles. But opponents have sought to cast mass shootings as primarily a mental health issue, not a weapons problem.

Most US citizens support tighter gun laws, according to opinion polls, but opposition from many Republican lawmakers has long been a hurdle to major changes.

Some lawmakers are trying to pass gun regulations.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed proposals last week that included raising the purchasing age for most semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21, but the party does not have the requisite 60 votes to advance it in the Senate.

A cross-party group of senators has also been working on a narrow collection of controls that could develop into the first serious attempt at gun regulation reform in decades.

Agencies Via Xinhua