March For Our Lives recap: Frustrated Americans rally for gun reform across US

At the March For Our Lives rally in Los Angeles, one woman held a sign reading: "Send the guns to Ukraine."

Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, a pediatric emergency medicine doctor in LA and a Parkland, Florida, native, explained the severity of semi-automatic rifle injuries.

He recalled his first experience treating patients shot by semi-automatic rifles, saying "the images of their injuries will be forever burned into my mind."

"I vividly remember thinking that no one should be able to inflict these types of injuries on a fellow human being," Birnbaum told the crowd.

A survivor of the 2014 mass shooting at the University of California Santa Barbara also shared her experience at the LA rally. She said after the shooting, her mother begged her to drop out of college, terrified for her safety.

Last month's Uvalde, Texas, shooting came one day after the anniversary of the UCSB massacre. She said she doesn't want any other generation to endure this grief.

"I know that we are exhausted -- but we must continue showing up … because I can't take it anymore," she said.

Buffalo, New York, residents held a March For Our Lives rally on Saturday, weeks after a mass shooting that killed 10 shook their community.

Another rally was in Parkland, Florida, home to the 2018 school shooting that killed 17.

Americans in cities across the nation, from New York to Chicago, also joined in, taking to the streets and making their voices heard.

"We need fewer guns in schools -- not more of them!" Randi Weinstein, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a passionate speech in Washington, D.C.

"Teachers want to be teaching!" she said. "As we head back to school this fall, please arm us with resources -- with books, with school counselors. Not with bulletproof vests."

Weinstein also addressed critical race theory, noting, "If we have the judgment to shoot a bad guy, why don't we have the judgment to plan our lessons?"

Yolanda King, a 14-year-old granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr., returned to the Washington, D.C., March For Our Lives stage, four years after she addressed protesters at age 10.

"Like so many of you, I come from a thoughtful, prayerful family. My grandfather was taken from the world by gun violence," the teen said.

King stressed that this movement "isn’t only about kids -- it's about all of us."

"We've had enough of having more guns than people," she said.