March for Our Lives, the student-led movement focused on gun violence prevention, held its second mass demonstration Saturday in Washington.
This comes after the shooting at an Uvalde, Texas elementary school that killed 19 students and two teachers.
March for Our Lives held its first rally in 2018 after the Parkland, Florida school shooting that killed 17 people.
The Grand Haven community joined the nationwide movement Saturday, holding its own rally.
“I know it’s a small town in a rural area, but really, we can make a difference,” said Gabrielle Scott, member of both West Michigan March for Our Lives and Students Demand Action.
“We’ve got people of all generations here. Younger people, older people, you know, and I hope that they recognize how many people support it and how many people support common sense gun laws and how many people support the community,” added Jackson Schulte, March for Our Lives member.
March for Our Lives aims to call on lawmakers and federal leaders to take action against gun violence and mass shootings.
“I feel that enough is enough, that we need to start realizing that everybody’s life is valuable and AR-15 rifles should not be around,” said former Coopersville kindergarten teacher, Heidi Tagg.
Adam Spence is a teacher and gun owner. He’s also calling for change.
“I would love to see the minimum age of being able to purchase semiautomatic rifles to 21, universal background checks. Also, I’m in favor of banning large capacity magazines,” said Spence.
FOX 17 also talked with two students, Molly and Hayley Huggette, who’ve spent the last few months lobbying at the Capitol.
“We don’t want to live in a world where we have to be scared to go to school every day,” they said. “We really want laws to be changed, and just all different policies to be changed, so we don’t have to be scared. We don’t have to be hearing about all of these shootings happening, so we can be kids.”
Everyone we talked with Saturday in Grand Haven hopes their message is heard.
“I hope that our legislators can be more aware of what’s going on and really listen to the people and our cries for help because we really do want bipartisan compromises and safer schools,” said Scott.
March of Our Lives rallies also took place Saturday in Oxford and Detroit.
