Gun control advocates marched through the streets of Lower Manhattan Monday night demanding change after a devastating mass shooting in Monterey Park, California that claimed 11 lives over the weekend.
The march was hosted by Gays Against Guns — an anti-gun group founded in the wake of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting that left 49 people dead. The group pledged to hold a vigil after every mass shooting involving the death of ten people or more — and more than half a decade later, they’re still gathering.
“This gun violence has got to end,” Jay W. Walker, an organizer of Gays Against Guns said at Sunday’s Union Square meet-up, where a vigil was held ahead of the march. “And so, we stand with the community of Monterey Park, California and with our Asian-American communities all over this country and with Americans — all of this country — living under the threat of gun violence every single day because we have an ineffectual political leadership.”
Donning all-white funeral attire, rally-goers clutched to paper signs reading “11 dead” — an act which feels to be on repeat for some of Gays Against Guns’ members. In the time since the Monterey Park shooting during a Lunar New Year celebration on Saturday, another mass shooting took place in Half Moon Bay, California, claiming seven lives.
It’s with shooting after shooting in mind that Walker’s group is demanding action against what they call a frightening new norm.
“It’s not even the end of January and we already have more mass shootings than we have days in the year that have passed in 2023,” former Manhattan Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou told the crowd. “Last year we had almost double mass shootings than days in the year.”
Keeping with their promises to act on every mass shooting, demonstrators marched from Union Square to Chinatown while brandishing banners and chanting, “No more!” The rally came to an end at Kimlau Square.
