The Fort Lauderdale rally came just days after a gunman killed 17 people in a high school in nearby Parkland.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Enough is enough. Never again. Change.
Hundreds of people echoed those messages during a rally Saturday on the steps of the federal courthouse here, where anger, sadness and pain were channeled into calls for action on stricter gun laws in the wake of this week’s deadly school shooting.
The gathering, organized by state Sen. Gary Farmer, comes just days after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in nearby Parkland, sparking an outcry for a ban on military-style rifles like the one used in the massacre.
“The discussion of sensible gun safety laws has been absent and silenced in Tallahassee and Washington, D. C., for far too long,” Farmer said, as the crowd, many carrying signs, erupted in cheers and applause.
“The rest of the world combined experiences a fraction of the types of mass shootings that we do here in America. That tells us that what we’re doing is wrong and needs to change.”
Local officials implored those in attendance to vote and call on their representatives to force gun control legislation to be heard. But some of the most impassioned pleas Saturday came from those who had just survived the bloodbath.
“My innocence, our innocence has been taken from us,” said Delaney Tarr, a senior at the school. “I am 17, but in a matter of days I aged decades.”
Tarr said the current state of gun laws allowed the alleged shooter to take her friends and classmates from her forever.
“I’ve had enough of thoughts and prayers, the hashtags, all of it. We need to make actual change,” she said. “This will not be forgotten. We will not be silenced. We want to make a change.”
Like many other speakers, Tarr’s classmate, Emma Gonzalez, blasted politicians who received donations from the National Rifle Association.
“To every politician who has taken donations from the NRA: Shame on you,” she said, through tears, as the crowd followed with chants of ‘shame on you.’
In a similarly emotional appeal to elected officials, Melissa Falkowski, a teacher at the school, called out Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature, asking for stricter gun laws.
“You need to make us safer, you need to make our students safer,” she said, to loud cheers. “No one should be able to buy an AR-15. No one. Especially not an 18-year-old.”
The resolve and outspokenness of those who lived through the tragedy will separate the mass shooting at the school from other massacres before, said U. S. Rep. Ted Deutch, whose district includes Parkland.
“Here’s the difference,” he told the crowd. “My friends here on this podium and all of you. And all of the people around America have seen the strength, the courage and the conviction of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. They will not allow this debate to end. They are just getting started.”
