A year after the March for Our Lives attracted 200,000 people to Washington, D.C., activists are back in the Capitol continuing to push for efforts to restrict access to firearms.
Tuesday’s effort from the movement, which resulted from the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, involved a pop-up gun violence prevention art installation on the lawn of the Capitol.
“A Week in America” commemorates the 735 people killed by gun violence each week, including 105 children, said Matt Deitsch, a Stoneman Douglas graduate who is a co-founder and chief strategist of March for Our lives.
U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat who represents the area around the Parkland school where 17 people were killed and 17 injured in last year’s massacre, noted that a week is the amount of time it took New Zealand to ban assault weapons after a massacre at a mosque in that country.
Deitsch and Deutch spoke at a news conference outside the Capitol on Tuesday, along with several other elected officials and activists connected with March for Our Lives. The event was streamed on Twitter.
Deitsch said he was in Washington on Tuesday to send a message to Congress, that it needs to take action to prevent both mass shootings and all other kids of gun violence.
He lamented what he sees from some in response to deaths in response to gun violence — “simply sending thoughts and prayers and moments of silence when we need legislative action when we need organizing. … Thoughts and prayers are complacency. It is not action. We need sustainable action.”
Deutch said March for Our Lives activists have “literally changed our country” by traveling the country to advocate for gun safety legislation, hold town halls, register voters and get them to the polls.
“The March for Our Lives was not the end. It was the beginning,” Deutch said. “I can’t thank these young people enough for their tireless work.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also credited the March for Our Lives movement’s efforts. On Dec. 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a shooter killed 20 first graders and six adults.
“This is what America looks like. This is what the best of America looks like, young people crusading,” Blumenthal said. “There is hope for gun-violence prevention. We are winning. Not all of it. Not all at once. But we are winning this crusade, and we need to redouble our efforts in this movement and to follow the brave example, their leadership by example, of these Parkland students.”
Deutch and Blumenthal said the effects of mass shootings are felt long after the shooting ends. “The shattering trauma of gun violence isn’t limited to a single day or a single incident,” Blumenthal said.
“It’s been a really difficult week in Parkland and Newtown,” Deutch said. Two Parkland shooting survivors and the father of a Newtown victim were found dead in apparent suicides.
“We have to talk about suicide. It’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to lean on one another. We’ve got to ask the questions of our friends and family who have survived gun violence, ‘Are you OK?’ ‘Do you need help?’ ‘Are you thinking of killing yourself?’ It does not hurt to ask. We have to be there for one another,” Deutch said.
If you have suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Deutch said people can also text the word “talk” to 741741 to be connected to a counselor.
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