WASHINGTON: Tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Wash-ington and at hundreds of rallies across the United States on Saturday to demand that lawmakers pass legislation aimed at curbing gun violence following last month’s massacre at a Texas elementary school.
In the nation’s capital, organisers with March for Our Lives (MFOL) esti-mated that 40,000 people assembled at the National Mall near the Washington Monument under occasional light rain. The gun safety group was founded by student survivors of the 2018 massacre at a Parkland, Florida, high school. Courtney Haggerty, a 41-year-old research librarian from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, travelled to Washington with her 10-year-old daughter, Cate, and 7-year-old son, Graeme.
Haggerty said the December 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Ele-mentary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when a gunman killed 26 people, mostly six- and seven-year-olds, came one day after her daugh-ter’s first birthday. –Agencies
