‘March For Our Lives’ Gun Control Rally Planned In Santa Monica

SANTA MONICA, CA — A march advocating gun control is planned in Santa Monica. Several other marches are planned Saturday across the Southland and the country, including in Washington, D.C., where up to 50,000 marchers are expected.

The Santa Monica march will start at 10 a.m. at the Aero Theater, 1328 Montana Ave. Attendees will march to Palisades Park, on Montana Ave. and Ocean Ave. Attendees are asked to wear the color orange in solidarity. The Santa Monica event will include speakers and entertainment. For more information on the Santa Monica march, visit the event's Facebook page.

The rally will demand action to stop shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 fourth graders. The March for Our Lives movement was founded in 2018 after 17 students were killed at a high school shooting in Parkland, Florida. That year, the group mobilized more than 1 marchers, the largest single-day protest against gun violence in U.S. history.

Still, four years later, gun laws have remained mostly unchanged. On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an expansive gun control bill that, among many other provisions, would raise the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles to 21, but the bill is unlikely to survive a Senate filibuster.

California fast-tracked a bill to enable private citizens to sue manufacturers of assault weapons and ghost guns. The state is also pursuing a proposal to budget $25 million for the state’s largest gun buyback program.

In New York, where ten people were killed in a shooting in Buffalo just over a week before the Uvalde shooting, Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Democrats have introduced 10 bills to tighten gun laws. Proposed bills would require law enforcement agencies to share information in crimes involving guns, require new guns to be microstamped, require licenses for semiautomatic rifles and raise the minimum age to 21, and more.

In Republican-led states, legislatures are unmoved, and advocate school security and mental health resources instead of gun control.

A Politico-Morning Consult poll shows that 65% of American voters, and 44% of Republican voters, favor stricter gun control laws in the United States. The poll also showed that large majorities of Republicans back universal background checks and bans of gun sales to adults under 21.