Joining nationwide demonstrations against gun violence, around 300 St. Louisans and gun violence survivors took to the street on Saturday, June 11, 2022, as part of a ‘March for Our Lives.’
“We can’t continue a political philosophy and ideology that says I can take care of me, I don’t have to take care of you,” Heather Fleming, founder of In Purpose Educational Services and Missouri Equity Education Partnership, said. “We rise together, or we fall together.”
The deadly massacres at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, targeting children, and at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, targeting Black people sparked an outcry for gun reform throughout the nation.
School massacre survivors from over the last 25 years from Pearl, Mississippi, Parkland, Florida and Newtown, Connecticut, shared their gut-wrenching stories.
“Four years later, I’m participating in the same marches, asking why America loves its guns more than its people?” Haley Stav, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor and social activist asked.
According to the National Park Service, around 50,000 protesters participated in the gun reform march in Washington, D.C. Some of the teenagers who survived the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Massacre in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 founded ‘March for Our Lives.’
“We can’t continue a political philosophy and ideology that says I can take care of me, I don’t have to take care of you,” Heather Fleming, founder of In Purpose Educational Services and Missouri Equity Education Partnership, said. “We rise together, or we fall together.”
Brown paper bags, 247 in all as of Saturday, were placed on the ground of Kiener Plaza’s lawn, memorializing the lives lost in massacres across the country in the last six months.
“Gun violence is my friend Bailey holding her little brother tight and saying an extra I love you before dropping him off because she doesn’t know if it’s the last time she’ll see him alive,” Stav said.
“Gun violence is bouquets of flowers in the street memorializing the unarmed black man who was reduced to a hashtag by a police officer.”
Gun reform legislation framework passed by the House last week includes universal background checks, red flag laws, mental health records review, and increasing the purchase age from 18 to 21. It is pending a Senate vote, and several GOP senators said they would support some aspects of the bill. Retiring Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt signaled signaled his support for some version of the bill over the weekend.
Survivor and teacher Liesl Fressola shared her harrowing story of how she escaped Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Fressola lost her best friend and teacher Vicky Soto in the massacre that day; Soto was 27.
“The unbelievable pain and grief that has followed that day have brought me to my knees,” Freesola said. “The best way I can describe it is that I felt I had a dark secret that everyone knew and was talking about.”
Several high-profile Republicans, including Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, have stated mental health issues and school security are common denominators.
“Multiple states are evaluating their laws and introducing bills to make much-needed changes; however, in Missouri, they’re not,” Amber Benge, a survivor of a 1997 school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi, said.
Following a 1996 U.K. massacre, the federal government enacted the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, which banned all cartridge ammunition handguns except for .22 caliber single-shot weapons. In 1998 the law banned the .22 cartridge handguns as well.
Beverly Logan, a protester and a League of Women Voters member, said she is frustrated at the apathy over the decades of the state and federal government’s response to gun violence. Logan said she would like to see the AR-15 off the market. Assault weapon availability was once subject to more criticism and limited for 10 years under the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act.
“Growing up, we didn’t have a lot, but we loved each other and cared for each other,” Logan said. “Now, we don’t believe in looking out for our neighbors. The proliferation of guns, the manufacturers and the lobbyists behind them have to go.”
Logan said gun-related murders happen daily, yet we wait for massacres to unite and demand change. She also said the regulation of guns on the market needs to be tighter so tracking lost or ‘re-sold’ guns is traceable.
“Young people can buy guns at 18 when their brains have not fully developed and can kill our children and our future,” Logan said.
The reoccurring silver lining from the massacre survivor stories was localized solutions.
A month following the Parkland Massacre, the Republican-run Florida Legislature passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, signed into law on March 9. The act raised the minimum age for buying rifles to 21, mandatory background checks, banned bump stocksand barred some potentially violent people arrested under certain laws from possessing guns. The NRA predictably sued because of the ACT; the suit was dismissed in June 2021.
“Senate Republican obstruction of gun violence prevention legislation is killing us, and it could have killed me,” Congresswoman Cori Bush said.
“I haven’t survived gun violence once; I survived multiple times.”
“I’m going to close with the words of the late great John Lewis,” Benge said. “Speak up, speak out, get in the way, get in good trouble, necessary trouble and help redeem the soul of America.”
