Several dozen students waved signs and chanted "No more silence,
end gun violence" inside the rotunda of the state's capitol
building in Des Moines as lawmakers begin their first
legislation session of 2024, video footage posted on social
media showed.
"Now is the time to take real action," State Representative Adam
Zabner, a Democrat, told the students. "We have the power to
take real action and save lives."
Specifically, organizers are hoping to persuade lawmakers to
halt proposed Republican-backed legislation that would allow
guns to be stored in cars on school property.
The demonstration comes four days after a 17-year-old high
school student shot and killed an 11-year-old sixth-grader and
wounded five others at a school in Perry, a rural community near
Des Moines.
The shooting, on the first day of classes following the
district's winter break, is part of a national epidemic of gun
violence in U.S. schools that has worsened in recent years.
It was one of four such incidents that unfolded in the first
week of the year after 2023 saw a record number of similar
events in U.S. schools, according to the K-12 School Shooting
Database.
Data shows that 346 incidents occurred in 2023 in which a gun
was brandished or fired at school or a bullet hit school
property. It was the most in any year since the organization
began compiling the data in 1966, and it marks the third
record-setting year in a row.
Next week, Iowa will take center stage in U.S. politics as the
state hosts the first Republican nominating contests for the
U.S. presidential election. Most of the Republican candidates
ardently oppose any efforts to regulate guns and routinely
dismiss calls for more gun control after mass shootings as
attempts to politicize tragedies.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Sharon
Singleton and Hugh Lawson)
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