Marchers call for gun reform at Pittsburgh event
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Students lead the March for Our Lives down Fifth Avenue to Market Square Saturday for a rally in Pittsburgh.
Students lead the March for Our Lives down Fifth Avenue to Market Square for a rally in Pittsburgh Saturday.
Ben Reinhard, right, 12, of White Oak, and his brother Noah, 13, hold signs in front of the City County Building portico Saturday during March for Our Lives in Pittsburgh.
Ben Reinhard, right, 12, of White Oak, holds a sign in front of the City County Building portico Saturday during March for Our Lives in Pittsburgh.
PITTSBURGH – Mitzi Miller of Bentleyville stressed Saturday she’s “not anti-gun, I’m anti-assault weapons” like the AR-15 used in a recent lethal school shooting in Florida.
“The only thing they need assault weapons for is war. I’m not going to go out in my backyard and hunt … with an assault rifle,” said Miller, 58, who herself used to hunt and owns several hunting rifles.
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Hannah Price, center, of Canonsburg, is pictured Saturday during March for Our Lives in Pittsburgh.
Miller spoke as she and her son, Kacey, 20, left a downtown coffee shop to join the estimated 30,000 people who marched in Pittsburgh.
The demonstration was held in conjunction with the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., whose website calls for “legislation to effectively address the gun violence issues that are rampant in our country.”
The impetus behind the more than 800 such events that day was the Feb. 14 school shooting at Parkland, Fla.’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Marchers gather at the City County Building portico Saturday during March for Our Lives in Pittsburgh.
The massacre at the school – which killed 14 students and three staff members – has brought outraged youth to the forefront of a growing movement, and students from area high schools joined politicians and activists in giving speeches in Market Square, the march’s destination.
“It seems to me that nothing about gun violence had ever changed, or had even really been up for debate until teenagers took charge,” said Lauren Rock, a junior at Pine-Richland High School in Allegheny County’s North Hills, during a fiery speech to the crowd filling most of the plaza. “I am 17 years old, and I have always known what to do in a classroom in the event of an armed intruder.”
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter
Hannah Price of Canonsburg speaks Saturday in front of the City County Building portico during March for Our Lives in Pittsburgh.
“And my philosophy – along with, obviously, everyone here, is that instead of just practicing drills that in the end really don’t do anything, we make the changes as a society that will make it difficult for the shooter to obtain that weapon in the first place,” she added to an eruption of cheers.
The mood in the crowd seemed by turns electric and solemn as one speaker after another demanded tighter restrictions on guns and expressed anger over the massacre and other gun violence.
Among those seated on stage during the speakers’ remarks was Conor Lamb, a Mt. Lebanon Democrat who won an upset victory in the March 13 special election to fill the 18th Congressional District seat vacated when former GOP congressman Tim Murphy resigned last year.
Lamb, a former prosecutor and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, said on the campaign trail he wanted more effective background checks but not a ban on assault weapons. On Saturday, he wouldn’t discuss whether he would support such a ban as he alighted from the stage into a throng of people eager to greet him.
“I’m not here to talk to the media,” he said.
Many marchers wielded homemade-looking signs. Some scorned the National Rifle Association, whose political arm frequently lobbies against tighter gun control and backs friendly candidates. “The NRA is a cult,” one sign read.
Others bore messages like “arm me with books” and “your vote is your voice.”
One attendee, Lisa Stout-Bashioum, 56, of Bentleyville, said she tried to organize a trip to the D.C. march, but was hamstrung when a bus company canceled her reservation. She said about 25 or 30 people were planning to go with her.
Instead, she was part of a group of about a dozen people from the Bentleyville area who met up in the South Hills and rode the light rail downtown together.
The Bentworth school board member said her “clarion call for needing widespread gun reform” came more than five years ago with the fatal shooting of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who carried out the shooting, also killed himself and his mother that day.
But in the aftermath, “there wasn’t as much of a movement,” Stout-Bashioum said.
“Then, we’ve seen the same horror repeat itself over and over again,” Stout-Bashioum said. “And I think Parkland was the tipping point.”