Marches organized this Saturday in hundreds of cities throughout the United States called for greater control of firearms, after the mass shootings that occurred in recent weeks in a supermarket in Buffalo (New York) and in a school in Uvalde (Texas).
The rallies, organized by the youth group “March for Our Lives,” took place in towns large and small across the US, from New York and Los Angeles to rural Iowa and Wisconsin.
The main one was that of the capital, Washington, which was convened next to the iconic monument to George Washington, the obelisk that stands in the center of the city a short distance from the White House and between the Capitol and the monument to Abraham Lincoln.
Although organizers had said they expected tens of thousands of participants, the Washington rally drew only a few thousand, on a day when the sky was gray in the US capital and it even drizzled.
With banners bearing slogans such as “It doesn’t have to be like that. Let’s put an end to gun violence” or “Congress, legislate now, do it for our future,” the protesters urged the political class to take measures that restrict access to firearms, especially semi-automatic ones.
In a message on his Twitter account, US President Joe Biden supported the marches and assured that a majority of Americans want “common sense” legislative measures in relation to weapons.
“Congress needs to ban assault weapons and high-capacity cartridges, tighten background checks, and remove gun manufacturers’ immunity from prosecution,” Biden said.
The “March for Our Lives” group was created in 2018 by students at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a shooting occurred that killed 17 people.
That same year, the organization called a march on Washington attended by hundreds of thousands of people, also with the aim of pressuring Congress to take legislative action to restrict access to firearms.
