Amid NRA Convention Cancellation, March For Our Lives Brings the Fight for Safety to Their Doorstep

March For Our Lives’ Virginia rallied at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, dropping off 212 school backpacks at their doorstep to symbolize the 212 children in Virginia who will never go back to school because of gun violence

Parkland, FL — As the NRA canceled their annual convention for “health and safety” reasons, March For Our Lives organizers in Virginia made it abundantly clear how hollow the NRA’s concerns for safety are. Young people rallied with signs, shouts, and 212 backpacks displayed in a row in front of the NRA’s headquarters, symbolizing the 212 young lives lost in Virginia alone to gun violence since 2014, and a searing reminder of the human toll of the NRA’s violent opposition to gun safety reform.

Across the country young people continue to bear the brunt of a gun violence epidemic that stubbornly persists because of the NRA and their cronies, who prefer profit over the lives of children. It bears repeating that youth hospitalizations for gun violence are already up 40% this year.

March For Our Lives Response to the NRA Canceling 150th Convention:

It’s abundantly clear that the NRA and the corrupt politicians they bankroll think that they live in an alternate reality where their actions don’t have consequences—and up until today, where they wouldn’t be touched by a global pandemic. They need not look any further than the 212 backpacks on their front door to see that isn’t true. The irony of the NRA canceling their convention for “health and safety” reasons would be funny, if their opposition to common sense gun safety legislation wasn’t deadly serious, to say nothing of their original decision to bring 72,000 people to a city already experiencing a deadly surge of COVID cases.

We said it in 2018 and we’ll say it again today: the NRA doesn’t deserve to exist, but we deserve to live. Thoughts and prayers, NRA.