Rallies spanned D.C. to Florida to Michigan to New York.
Angry and frustrated Americans joined rallies and marches across the U.S. Saturday to advocate for gun reform in the wake of the back-to-back mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.
The nationwide event was organized by March For Our Lives, a group founded by student survivors of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people.
The marches are in response to the May 24 shooting at a Uvalde elementary school that killed 19 students and two teachers, as well as the May 14 massacre at a Buffalo grocery store where 10 people, all of whom were Black, were gunned down in an alleged hate crime.
The Washington, D.C., crowd briefly dispersed in a false alarm incident.
Activist Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in Parkland, took the mic to calm the protesters, saying everyone was OK and "there is nothing to be concerned about."
Speakers then resumed.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., shared a personal story at the Washington, D.C., march, recounting when, as a young adult, she was in a relationship with an abusive partner who owned guns.
"He did not approve of the way I was cooking … we began arguing, he started to hit me. I decided to run out of the apartment," Bush said. "As I ran, I remember thinking to myself, why isn’t he chasing me? … When I turned back for a moment … I heard shots. Shots fired. But I didn’t know if they were aimed at me. Until they started whizzing past my head."
"That moment of horror, it stays with me," Bush said.
"It's so deeply traumatic and completely preventable," Bush said, referencing the boyfriend loophole, red flag laws and universal background checks.
Bush said, "We will never give up our push to save lives."
Manuel Oliver, whose son, 17-year-old, Joaquin was killed in Parkland, said in Washington, D.C., "Our elected officials betrayed us and have avoided the responsibility to end gun violence."
He said, "If lawmakers who have the power to keep us safe from gun violence are going to avoid taking action," then he's calling for a nationwide strike of schools, from elementary to college.
"Avoid attending school if your leaders fail … to keep us safe," he said. "Avoid going back to school if President Biden fails to open a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention so that we can finally give this issue the attention that it deserves."
Oliver appeared on stage with David Hogg, a Parkland survivor and March For Our Lives co-founder, who vowed, "This time is different."
"This is not a political issue -- this is a moral issue," Hogg said.
He suggested combatting gun violence the way the U.S. addressed cigarettes.
"With cigarettes, we didn’t just change the laws -- we addressed why people want to smoke in the first place," Hogg said. "We have to address how people get guns and why they feel the need to pick them up in the first place. We must address the fact that the reason why communities like Parkland don't have shootings on a daily basis isn't because we necessarily have the strongest laws … we have some of the most resources."
New York Attorney General Letitia James joined a march in Brooklyn, tweeting, "We will fight every single day until we get the common-sense gun reforms this nation needs to end gun violence and save lives."
