Here’s the speech from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma Gonzalez at an anti-gun rally happening today in Fort Lauderdale https://t.co/CyfMnPDAvW // https://t.co/hgewZy4Cxf https://t.co/gssAmGczuH
— Joshua Chavers (@JoshuaChavers) February 17, 2018
A student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School delivered an emotional speech at a gun control rally in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Saturday, calling out President Trump, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other congressional lawmakers.
“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened, and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association,” Emma Gonzalez said during her speech. “I already know — $30 million.”
{mosads}“Divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the one and a half months of 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800,” she continued. “Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?”
The crowd at the rally began chanting “shame on you” after Gonzalez mentioned the NRA’s donations to Trump.
Gonzalez called out Trump for signing a bill last year that overturned an Obama-era regulation designed to make it harder for mentally ill people to purchase guns.
“The people in the government who are voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call ‘B.S.,’ ” Gonzalez said. “We are prepared to call ‘B.S.’ ”
Gonzalez slammed lawmakers who “sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA” for saying nothing can be done to prevent shootings.
“We call ‘B.S.,’ ” Gonzalez said. “They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call ‘B.S.’ They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call ‘B.S.’ ”
“If you agree, register to vote,” she said. “Contact your local congresspeople. Give them a piece of your mind. Give them a piece of your mind.”
17 people were killed in the mass shooting at the Parkland, Fla., high school on Wednesday.
Democrats have renewed their call for gun control legislation following the attack. Survivors of the attack have joined in the call, demanding GOP lawmakers take action after the shooting.