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March For Our Lives 2018

Demonstrators participate in the March for Our Lives Los Angeles rally on March 24, 2018. (Photo: Sarah Morris/Getty Images)

'No Time to Waste': New Nationwide March For Our Lives Protests Set for June 11

"Together, we rose up four years ago. One million of us demanded change. We built a movement. We voted for new leaders. And the gun deaths increased. Now is the moment we march again."

Four years, over 100 school shootings, and more than 170,000 U.S. firearm deaths after the first March For Our Lives rallies in 2018, the student-led gun control advocacy group announced Wednesday that it would stage a new nationwide day of protest on June 11 following Tuesday's Robb Elementary School massacre in Texas.

"You can't stop a bullet with thoughts and prayers. To honor those lost and save countless lives, we need action. We're dying while we wait for it."

"Together, we rose up four years ago. One million of us demanded change. We built a movement. We voted for new leaders. And the gun deaths increased," March For Our Lives tweeted. "Now is the moment we march again."

Responding to Tuesday's school shooting in Uvalde, Texas--in which 19 children and two adults were murdered--March For Our Lives asked, "Do our lives mean fucking nothing?"

"Here we are again, saying the same thing," the group continued, "the disgusting and shameful fact in America is that another shooting like this was just a matter of time because of our political leaders' breathtaking disregard for our lives. We are enraged at politicians who stand in the way of lifesaving change on both sides of the aisle."

"You can't stop a bullet with thoughts and prayers," March For Our Lives added. "To honor those lost and save countless lives, we need action. We're dying while we wait for it."

As students across the United States walked out of their classrooms Thursday to protest gun violence and decades of politicians' inaction, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators met to discuss gun control. Right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virgina--who last year opposed a bill passed by the House that would require background checks on all firearm purchases--this time signaled a possible change of heart.

"I can't get my grandchildren out of my mind. It could have been them," he said, referring to the Texas shooting.

Manchin added that he would do "anything I can" to advance "common sense" firearms legislation. Anything, critics noted, except end the filibuster, which Republican lawmakers have repeatedly used to stymie their opponents' progressive agenda.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked legislation aimed at combating the growing threat posed by neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and other domestic extremists, less than two weeks after a white supremacist murdered 10 people, most of them Black, in a Buffalo, New York supermarket. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed the measure just five days after the Buffalo shooting.

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Crosses adorn a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022.

'We Continue to Fail to Protect Our Youngest': Guns Leading Cause of Death in Kids

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At least one million and perhaps twice that many people in the United States and around the world took part in the March 24, 2018 March For Our Lives, including up to 800,000 demonstrators in Washington, D.C. The massive demonstrations occurred weeks after 17 people were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Prominent participants in the protest included Parkland survivor David Hogg, who was subsequently mocked and harassed by future Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who called the massacre and other school shootings false-flag operations orchestrated by Democrats pushing gun control legislation.

According toEducation Week--which began tracking U.S. school shootings two weeks before Parkland--there have been 119 such incidents, with 88 deaths and 229 injuries, since February 2018.

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