Little Rock rally among at least 6 marches on guns planned in state

More than 800 marches are planned around the world today as part of a movement in support of stronger gun-control laws that was prompted by a mass shooting at a Florida school last month.

Washington, D.C., will be the site of the main and largest "March for Our Lives" rally in the United States, but marches are scheduled across the nation.

Organizers plan at least six marches in Arkansas, including one in Little Rock.

"No child should live in fear of dying when they simply go to school to learn," Chris Kingsby, an 18-year-old organizer from Arkansas who will speak at today's Little Rock event, said in a statement. "But change is coming, and it starts now."

The worldwide rallies coincidentally fall on the 20th anniversary of Arkansas' deadliest school shooting. Two students killed four children and a teacher March 24, 1998, on the Westside Middle School campus in a rural community about 2 miles outside of Jonesboro in northeast Arkansas.

The rallies come in the aftermath of last month's school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a former student killed 17 people.

Students at Stoneman Douglas High organized the march on Washington, D.C. They and others coordinating and organizing marches across the nation are supported by gun-control advocacy groups, such as Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and the Brady Campaign.

The stated mission, according to the march's website, is "to demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues."

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, said the ultimate legislative goal is to win passage of legislation that failed in 2013 in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at the Newtown, Conn., elementary school in 2012.

That bill would have mandated criminal background checks on gun sales, including at gun shows and Internet sales. It also would have created a commission to study causes of violence.

Other goals for the people marching today include making it more difficult for domestic abusers to obtain guns, raising the age to buy assault weapons from 18 to 21 and implementing red flag laws, which allow law enforcement officials to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed dangerous.

Organizers predict that the rally near the U.S. Capitol will draw a half-million people -- many of them high school students.

"I look at the younger kids and the future generations, and I never want them to go through what we went through or see what we saw," said 15-year old Kayla Renert, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

According to the march's website, at least 836 other similar events are planned, mostly in the United States.

Besides Little Rock, organizers said marches will be held in Jonesboro, Bentonville, Fort Smith, Eureka Springs and Springdale.

In Little Rock, marchers will gather at Pulaski Street and Capitol Avenue at 10 a.m. Around 10:30 a.m., they will walk roughly two blocks to the state Capitol steps.

Students from Searcy, Bryant, Little Rock, Greenbrier and Arkansas Tech University, as well as a representative from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America are scheduled to speak.

Information for this article was contributed by Polly Irungu of Arkansas Online; Emma Pettit of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Kate Irby of Tribune News Service; and Ashraf Khalil of The Associated Press.

Metro on 03/24/2018

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