A Saturday afternoon (6/3) march and rally in Tallahassee targeted gun violence across the nation and closer to home. Several groups, including the League of Women Voters, organized the protest.
The marchers wore orange, the official color of this weekend's national campaign against gun violence. Several speakers at the rally talked about the tens of thousands of national gun violence victims every year. Meg Baldwin, executive director of Refuge House, also focused on the local death toll.
"Of 11 cases of domestic violence homicide being investigated by our Leon County Domestic Violence fatality team," she told the crowd, "Five were committed with a gun."
Tallahassee City Commissioner Curtis Richardson insisted the idea was not to deny law-abiding citizens their Second Amendment rights, but rather to adopt measures to keep guns out of the hands of those who might misuse those weapons.
"Such as background checks at gun shows and not allowing those with mental illness to be able to purchase handguns," he said as the audience cheered its approval.
Similar rallies were held in dozens of U.S. cities over the weekend.
