Others believed if they stayed silent, nothing would change.
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Florence Yared, a student who survived the Florida shooting, called on lawmakers to protect children over protecting guns. During their 400-mile trip to Tallahassee, they spoke with The Associated Press.
“We can no longer pretend that gun control isn’t an issue for education”, Cohen said.
“The AR-15 did so much damage, how is an individual in society allowed to acquire such a gun?” asked one student.
Hogg said students are rising up and are exhausted of ineffective leaders. “Every single weapon is awful when it is in the hands of someone who is mentally unstable”. She vowed to continue approaching lawmakers until something changes. “That disgusts me”, Delaney Tarr, a shooting survivor, said. Some are speaking in favor for stricter mental health checks for gun ownership or tighter age restrictions to purchase weapons.
“I’m here to use my voice because I know he can’t”, Mr Zeif said. “And we are going to be voting you out”. “Nobody’s hearing because what happened yesterday never would have happened”, said Linda Boxman, the parent of a Parkland student.
“Every single classroom had at least one person come out of it, and all my friends just knew they needed to come out and they did”, Bazin said.
By 2 p.m., several students began boarding buses back to south Florida, saying they felt inspired from the day’s event.
“There is no way this can happen again”. The shooter, a 31-year-old lawyer and FSU alumni, was killed after refusing to put down his weapon: a semi-automatic rifle, the same weapon used at the Parkland shooting. “I don’t want to be scared for them when I leave them at school, when they go out to the movies, that they might get hurt in something like this”.
“It looks like it’s going to be the kids who save us”.
“We’re not stepping down”, Carter said.
“I think that’s certainly something that’s on the table for us to discuss”, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded.
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“What we must do now is enact change because that is what we do to things that fail: We change them”.
