Students of Gun Violence

“We need to be able to go to school without fear of being shot.” Protester, MoCo Students for Change

This is the 5th rally against gun violence I photographed in a year.

My interest in gun control started when President Ronald Regan and his press secretary, James Brady, were wounded by an attempted assassination in March 1981. I was still in high school, and back then violence was limited to fist fights, not firearms.

I felt some sort of solidarity with the thousands of high school students from Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., who walked out of classes and descended on the White House and the U.S. Capitol demanding stricter gun-control legislation. I too would have marched when I was a high school student nearly 40 years ago..

It was also inspiring to hear Senator Chris Murphy, from my home state of Connecticut, who’s a champion of gun-control legislation: “I couldn’t be more excited to see the energy of this movement increasing every single day,” he told the thousands of teenagers. “The adults have handed over the keys of this movement to you, and you are now in charge to see that we save millions of lives in this country.”

And these teens realize that one day some of those lives they save may be their classmates, or even their own.