The group, March for Our Lives, is planning marches across Texas later this month in response to the shooting in Uvalde. The group was started by students after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018.
"March for our Lives is a non-profit and student-led," says Lillie Doze, an organizer and student at Young Women's Leadership Academy in Fort Worth. "We push for universal background checks and a ban on assault rifles in hopes of making gun violence obsolete."
June 11, March for Our Lives will hold rallies across the country. In Fort Worth, the rally will take place outside the Tarrant County Courthouse.
"Every student and teacher in America is affected by gun violence," Doze says. "We have to go through drills on what happens if an active shooter enters the building."
Doze says active shooter drills and news about shootings at other schools take attention away from their education. She says the threat of a shooter exists every day.
"We can't become numb to all these school shootings," she says. "We have to do something now. It's more urgent than ever because there have been more mass shootings than days of the year in 2022. Every day that goes by, people are dying."
The non-profit, Gun Violence Archive, says there have been 233 mass shootings in the United States in 2022. The organization defines a mass shooting as a case where at least four people are shot.
In 2020, the organization recorded 611 mass shootings; in 2014, 269 shootings met that criteria.
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