Statewide Marches For Gun Reform To Happen Saturday

Across the state Wisconsin residents will take to the streets for the March For Our Lives, calling for gun reform and legislative solutions to gun violence on Saturday. They will be marching in solidarity with others around the country.

The main March For Our Lives will be in Washington D.C. on Saturday. There are 840 coordinating marches around the country, according to March for Our Lives.

Fourteen corresponding marches or rallies have been planned across Wisconsin.

Activists organized the event after 17 people were killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Saturday’s march follows a nationwide school walkout on March 14. Students across Wisconsin took part in the walkout. In Madison, they also marched to the Capitol.

Madison organizers said they are expecting more than a thousand people. Milwaukee’s Facebook event shows similar estimates.

Madison Police Department officers will be at the event, and MPD spokesman Joel DeSpain said at this point, MPD, “… doesn’t have anything to suggest a counter protest.”

Jack Larsen, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying political science, helped organize the Madison March For Our Lives. He said the goals of the march are to ban bump stocks and assault-style weapons, like AR-15s. They also are calling for universal background checks.

“When we make specific demands of politicians and of people who are in elected office, they know that we’re not just kind of making platitudes about we want to feel safer and we want gun control,” he said. “We’re asking for specific requirements that we see as the most pressing and most effective legislation that could help stop school shootings and other community shootings.”

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan will speak at Madison’s event.

Larsen said people want change, and there will be more events to keep the movement’s momentum.

“I’m just tired of seeing these events happen over and over again without action,” he said.

There have been 17 school shootings in 2018 that resulted in injury or death, according to CNN. The most recent was March 20 in Maryland.

Milwaukee’s Mayor Tom Barrett held a press conference Friday ahead of the march. More than 1,500 people have said they are going to Milwaukee’s march on Facebook. He said a majority of Wisconsin residents support universal background checks.

“Yet at the state level and at the federal level, our elected officials are not passing laws that meet the expectations of the people who elect them,” Barrett said.

Barrett said he plans on marching with students Saturday.