Photo: Screenshot/CNS NY
Thousands of Americans representing all ages and communities staged protest marches against gun violence in New York and other parts of the country a spate of deadly school shootings that have prompted widespread calls for gun law reforms.
In New York, a student-led group called Youth Over Guns organized Saturday’s protest, continuing its campaign for gun control laws which it began after a high school in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff were killed in February.
The recent shooting in school, carried out by students having access to weapons, has catapulted the issue to the forefront of societal and political discourse in the midterm election year.
A Pakistani student, Sabika Sheikh was among victims of a shooting rampage at the Santa Fe High School in Texas, where nine more live were lost.
Wearing orange color shirts, the protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and then passed through streets of the lower Manhattan.
The participants expressed anger that despite continuing violence, steps have not been taken to deter misuse of weapons.
Aalayah Eastmond, a survivor of the shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was among those who addressed the crowd.
Gun violence in the United States claims around 33,000 live every year.
A study published in April by researchers at Clemson University, cited by the American media, says shootings have killed more people in the last 18 years than in the entire 20th century.
The proponents of gun ownership, supported by the National Rifles Association, defend their right to keep weapons and argue that it is not the guns but other factors like the mental health of attackers, that are to blame for rising incidents of shootings.
