I went down to the March For Our Lives rally in DC to protest gun violence with my mom. I grew up upper middle class in living in the suburbs of DC and still gun violence was a part of my life as a kid. DC was the murder capital of the United States in the crack cocaine era and violence was on the news every day growing up here, but it wasn’t just on TV. Shortly before my first birthday one of my neighbors was shot in the head during an attempt on Ronald Reagan life. His name was James Brady and the bill that requires gun background checks is named after him. When I was six years my pediatrician opened his front door and a hit man, hired by his step son, shot him in the face. While I was on the way to school in the 7th grade a man named Mir Aimal Kasi walked up to the front gate of the CIA and fired 10 shots with a semi automatic rifle into the line of cars waiting to get in killing two CIA agents and injuring three more. The CIA was right down the street from my school and my school bus had to park a few blocks from the CIA while they searched for Kasi. Eventually we arrived at my school and were locked down for the rest of the day and spent recess indoors for a week. Just recent one of my friend’s who had been sober over a year, fell off the wagon and got in a fight with his girlfriend. While she went upstairs to sleep he took out his handgun and shot himself in the face.

If it were up to me, guns would be illegal everywhere, but it’s not up to me. Despite what you may believe I am a proud American and I love this country. Even at the worst of times, seeing this country stand up to it’s abusive leaders is inspiring. I know the vast majority of this country believes that guns should be legal and I am completely fine with that. Let people hunt, let people shoot insane guns at gun ranges and let people own a gun if they think somehow it’s going to protect them and their family. But most people in this country also think background checks should be stricter and modifications that make semi-automatic weapons automatic should be illegal. There are a lot of steps we could take in this country to make things safer and our government is not doing anything about it, and that is a bigger problem to me than the guns.

People talk about politicians being bought by the NRA, but it’s not just about the money. In red districts around the country, politicians know that if they don’t have an A+ rating from the NRA they aren’t going to be able to win a primary election. The NRA holds more power as a voting block than it does as a campaign contribution. Gun owners vote and the only way to fight the NRA is to be just as organized and just as likely to vote. The NRA uses fear to sell guns, but they also use fear to win elections. The best way to get bills passed is to scare these bastards even more than the NRA does. And that’s what today’s march was about.

When my mom and I got to the Navy Memorial/ National Archives Metro stop, several blocks away from the march, we couldn’t even get off the escalator because there were so many people there. I heard estimates of as many as a million people took part in the march. Over 700 marches around the country, including at least one in every state, brough millions of people together to stand up for not just the children involved in mass shootings but the children impacted by gun violence everywhere.

Because my mom is getting older and because it was so crowded we only stayed for about two hours and didn’t get anywhere near the stage or the kids of Parkland, Florida, but it was still pretty inspiring. I used to go to protests all the time when I was in high school but it was usually just a bunch of punk kids mixed in with mostly older people. This march had so many kids of all ages. It also had a ton of people my mom’s age. We met a Vietnam Vet who was a the first protest of his life. He said he wished he was in DC in 1968 instead of Vietnam. My mom told him she was there protesting the war. He thanked her and told her it was because of the anti-war protesters that he got home 45 days early. He thought it saved his life if not his sanity.

I didn’t take a ton of photos or anything because we didn’t really go anywhere and I was mostly just spending the day with my mom, but I still got a small gallery for you guys, mostly just of signs. This day wasn’t really about photos, it was about spending the day with the woman who helped instill in me a belief in the power of activism and the hope of progress. When we got home we sat and watched the rest of it on TV with my father who would have marched with us if he wasn’t recovering from surgery and it just made me really proud to have parents who actually give a fuck about the world and want to see it a better place even if they won’t be around to see it.

Click here to see my photos from the March For Our Lives in Washington, DC.

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