Bay Area students are among the thousands nationwide participating in "Die-In Against Gun Violence" demonstrations Tuesday meant to stir up action and stop the gun violence claiming thousands or innocent lives.
On the second anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, students gathered at Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco to commemorate the lives lost to gun violence, dropping to the ground for a full 12 minutes.
"You know what's amazing is it's actually tens of thousands of others who have died since then," said Robyn Thomas, executive director of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "We have almost 40,000 people a year dying from gun violence in the United States now."
At the Gifford's Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco, advocates craft new policies to save lives, but Thomas says it's students driving the change.
"They are absolutely fearless," said Thomas. "They have an innocence of, 'you can’t pin on them that they come at this with a political agenda,' their only agenda is, 'we don’t want to die in our classrooms.'"
Matt Deitsch is one of those students. He’s as Stoneman Douglas grad and chief strategist for March for Our Lives, moved by Bay Area students picking up the baton and battling for new laws.
"In two years since Pulse, that exact situation could happen today, that exact situation," said Deitsch. "When I see these students around the country rising up, I know that they’re continuing the conversations in their communities and continuing the conversations to their local legislators, and that’s what we need to save lives."
