People prepare to march across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York to protest against gun violence in the March for Our Lives rally on Saturday June 11, 2022 [Spencer Platt/Getty Images/via AFP

New York, June 12 (RHC)-- Thousands of people have rallied on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and across the United States, as part of a renewed push for nationwide gun controls following the recent massacre of students and teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Speaker after speaker in Washington on Saturday called on US senators, who are seen as a major impediment to stricter gun legislation, to act or face being voted out of office.  

“Enough is enough,” District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser told the anti-gun rally.  “I speak as a mayor, a mom, and I speak for millions of Americans and America’s mayors who are demanding that Congress do its job.  And its job is to protect us, to protect our children from gun violence.”

More than 450 rallies were scheduled, including events in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, according to March for Our Lives, a gun safety group founded by student survivors of a 2018 massacre at a high school in Florida.

The group’s 2018 march on Washington, just weeks after 17 people were killed at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, brought more than 200,000 people to the US capital to pressure Congress to enact sweeping reforms – though Republican opposition has prevented any new limits on guns from passing the US Senate.

“If our government can’t do anything to stop 19 kids from being killed and slaughtered in their own school, and decapitated, it’s time to change who is in government,” said David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting in Parkland.

“This time is different,” Hogg said, leading the crowd in a chant.  He later led the crowd in chants of “Vote them out.”

Motivated to demonstrate following a recent surge in mass shootings, from Uvalde, Texas to Buffalo, New York, protesters are calling on lawmakers to take note of shifting public opinion and pass legislation aimed at curbing gun violence.

The May 24 attack in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers took place just 10 days after another gunman murdered 10 Black people in a Buffalo grocery store in a racist attack.

It is “all too easy” for young men to walk into stores and buy weapons, said Debra Hixon, whose husband, high school athletic director Chris Hixon, died in the Parkland school shooting.

“Going home to an empty bed and an empty seat at the table is a constant reminder that he is gone,” said Hixon, who now serves as a school board member.