Marching for right to live in safety

One month after a shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school left 17 students and staff dead, survivors of the massacre, along with millions of schoolchildren across the nation, walked out of class in protest over America’s lax gun control laws.

On Saturday, it was the parents’ turn - as well as that of grandparents, neighbors, teachers, siblings and hundreds of thousands of other supporters - to join them in the largest nationwide youth-led protest since the Vietnam War era.

“March for Our Lives” rallies commanded and demanded the nation’s attention from Washington, D.C., to California, including an estimated 2,000 people who crowded into Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square. Carrying signs that read “Protect kids, not the NRA,” “Books not bullets” and “Give teachers raises not guns,” they joined in a common message: Enough is enough.

And they’re right. America needs to stop using a contorted interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as an excuse to avoid adopting sensible gun control laws such as mandatory background checks and a ban on assault weapons like the kind used in the Parkland massacre.

The need for such sensible gun regulations has never been greater, as speakers repeatedly emphasized on Saturday.

Jacquelyn Torres, a Sonoma Valley High School junior and one of the organizers of the Santa Rosa rally, said she was “infuriated because of the shootings that are becoming normalized.”

Normalized indeed. According to a Washington Post analysis, since the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours. That means more than 187,000 students have experienced what it means to have an active shooter on campus. As a speaker noted Saturday, that’s about 20,000 more than the population of Santa Rosa.

Not only does the nation need tighter gun regulations, the majority of Americans want it to happen. A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows that 69 percent of Americans think gun laws need to be strengthened. That’s up from?55 percent just five years ago.

The tide has shifted. And if members in Congress remain resistant to the call for change, then the change that’s needed is in Congress - beginning with midterm elections.

It’s time to listen to the students and stop putting the interests of the NRA ahead of the lives of children. Enough is enough.