Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Jaclyn Corin, Ryan Deitsch, Delaney Tarr, Cameron Kasky and Emma Gonzalez say their work does not stop with Saturday’s March for Our Lives that brought more than 200,000 people to the streets in Washington, D.C., calling for gun control. They told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that they will continue to demand policy action on the part of the nation’s lawmakers to ensure students’ lives are protected from acts of gun violence like the shooting that left 17 people dead at their school last month.
“Well, here in Washington we are demanding an assault weapons ban. We are demanding the prohibition of sales of high-capacity magazines and we are demanding universal background checks, which is something you’ll see, from the polls, pretty much the entire country is behind and yet we’ve seen nothing of it,” said student organizer Cameron Kasky.
Delaney Tarr said huge crowds took the streets in D.C. and around the country “because they support the cause.” She added, “They support safety. They support our lives and protecting our lives. And that’s what matters. Even if there is some small issue that they don’t necessarily stand with us on they stand with us and that’s what matters.”
Emma Gonzalez says the students are focusing on the midterm elections over the months ahead.
“This is not the end. This was just the beginning. We’re going to — over the summer, we’re going to try to, you know, go around to colleges and stuff in our communities, reach out to the kids locally all around the country. And we didn’t just have support all over the country. We [had] support all over the world,” said Gonzalez.
The students said the issue of arming teacher in schools, a policy President Trump has embraced as a means to prevent mass shootings, was not well-received at that march. They also noted that the issue of gun violence extends beyond school safety.
“I mean I can say from firsthand as I said the line, ‘We need to arm our teachers,’ I heard booing from the crowd. I heard they were clearly not behind a message like that. And when I turned it around to say that they need to be armed with pens, pencils, paper and the money they need to support themselves, you could see the crowd regain support,” said Ryan Deitsch.
Jaclyn Corin echoed Deitsch, saying, “Obviously, school safety is important but it doesn’t just happen in schools. And people need to understand that it’s a public safety issue, not a school safety issue. We need to fight the problem from the core, which is guns.”
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