Following last month's elementary school shooting in Texas, tens of thousands of people converged on Washington and hundreds more demonstrations around the United States on Saturday to demand that Congress approve laws to reduce gun violence.

March for Our Lives (MFOL) organizers estimated that in Washington, D.C., 40,000 people gathered on the National Mall near the Washington Monument in light rain. The gun safety organization was created by students who survived the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Courtney Haggerty, a 41-year-old research librarian from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and her children Cate, 10, and Graeme, 7, traveled to Washington.

Haggerty stated that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a gunman killed 26 people, primarily six- and seven-year-olds, occurred one day after her daughter's first birthday.

"I was left raw," she claimed. "I cannot believe she will be 11 and that we are still doing this."

In November's midterm elections, when control of Congress will be at issue, Americans should vote out lawmakers who refuse to act, according to Kay Klein, a Fairfax, Virginia-based educator trainer of 65 years who retired earlier this month.

"We must vote if we truly care about children and families," she stated.

"Absolutely Absurd"

On May 24, a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, murdered 19 children and two instructors. Ten days after, another gunman murdered 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, in a racist attack.

The shootings have injected additional urgency into the continuing debate over gun violence in the United States. Still, the chances for federal legislation remain dubious due to Republican hostility to any restrictions on firearms.

Recently, a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators has pledged to reach an agreement, but they have yet to do so. Their focus is on minor adjustments, such as providing incentives for states to approve "red flag" laws that allow authorities to seize firearms from potentially dangerous persons.

Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, who pushed Congress to prohibit assault weapons, expand background checks, and enact other reforms earlier this month, stated his support for the protests on Saturday.

X Gonzalez, a Parkland survivor and co-founder of MFOL, stated in an emotional statement alongside survivors of prior horrific shootings, "We are being murdered." You, Congress, have taken no action to stop it.

MFOL has called for a ban on assault weapons, universal background checks for gun buyers, and a national licensing system that would record gun owners, among other proposals.

Biden told reporters in Los Angeles that he had spoken on multiple occasions with Senator Chris Murphy, who is handling Senate negotiations, and that negotiators were "modestly optimistic."

Wednesday, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives enacted a comprehensive package of gun safety regulations. Still, the legislation has no chance of passing the Senate, where Republicans consider gun restrictions infringing on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

David Hogg, a Parkland survivor and co-founder of MFOL, spoke at the Washington rally with the presidents of the two major U.S. teachers unions, Becky Pringle and Randi Weingarten, and the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser.

Zena Phillip, 16, and Blain Sirak, 15, from the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland, said they had never participated in a protest before, but the massacre inspired us in Texas.

"The mere possibility that something could occur at my own school terrifies me," Phillip remarked. "Many children are becoming so desensitized to this that they feel hopeless."

Sirak stated that she supported stricter gun regulations and that the issue was not limited to mass shootings but also included the daily toll of gun violence.

In America, "military-grade firearms are available," she stated. It is ludicrous.