BRUNSWICK

“If we’re old enough to spend our last moments bleeding out on a classroom floor, then we’re old enough to use our voice,” said Morse High School student Eli Goodrich to a crowd of more than 1,000 people on the Brunswick Mall Saturday. 

Goodrich was among a group of students from area high schools who during a rally to honor victims of gun violence and demand change. Local students met with Brunswick Area Indivisible to plan the March for Our Lives event, of which more than 800 took place around the country Saturday. Students participated from Brunswick, Freeport, Mt. Ararat and Morse high schools as well as Harpswell Coastal Academy and Lincoln Academy. 

Hundreds of people of all ages gathered on the Topsham side of the Frank J. Wood Bridge. Many carried signs calling for tougher gun laws and background checks on all gun sales. The long line of marchers walked across the bridge, some throwing flowers into the Androscoggin River in memory of the most recent victims of school shootings, and moved down and across Maine Street in Brunswick to the Mall. The trees there were used to set up a memorial for the victims of the school shooting Feb. 14 in Parkland, Fla.

“A normal Valentine’s Day would end in disaster when a gunman opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, ending the lives of 17. Seventeen important people with lives, families, jobs, aspirations, hopes, dreams, fears and places in this world,” said Goodrich. “Students across this country and the world are joining hands in solidarity to end these outbreaks of mass violence once and for all.”

Unfortunately, Goodrich said, students’ efforts are not being welcomed by all.

“Grown adults, the same people who said that we could be wanted to be and do what we wanted to do and say what we wanted to say, are putting us down for taking a stand,” he said. “They’re calling us names, implying that it’s our fault, and even going as far as to threaten us with violence. 

“We will not sit down,” he continued. “We will continue our actions until a change takes place. We will no longer sit in our classrooms and schools having to worry about how sturdy our classroom door is or how far the fall out the window will be or how our teachers and classmates will respond to the speed and power of bullets and the shredding of bodies.”

Morse High School sophomore Elizabeth Schotten shared the steps required to buy a gun in Japan, which she said has one of the lowest gun crime rates.  

“Strict gun control laws protect Japan from mass shootings, the same can happen in America,” she said. “Stricter background checks and more education to receive a license for a gun, a law limiting how much ammo or magazines you can buy would be a great first step in achieving a lower death count from gun violence, as well as being able to implement the precept that to buy fresh cartridges you must return the ones that you spent (since) your last visit.”

While this won’t bring death counts down to double digits, “it will bring us closer and zero, lives will be saved and that is what is important,” Schotten said. “Enough is enough. Action, action needs to happen!”

Students also talked about the importance of registering to vote if old enough, and writing letters to their legislators.

“From this point on, from D.C. to Brunswick, we need to stay on the course and ensure change occurs for our youth and honor the needless deaths of all the students and staff that died in school shootings,” said Fiona Hoang, a Mt. Ararat High School student. “Try and tell the families of the 17 victims at Marjory Stoneman that guns don’t kill. Take action.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com