“Not one more” was the cry of Oxford High School teenagers as they led a crowd marching around the Square on Saturday morning. The March for Our Lives Oxford event was a part of a national rally to end gun violence.
The movement follows a recent increase in the nation of both mass shootings and gun violence in schools, including the shooting last month at a high school in Parkland, Florida killing 17 people.
The march was likely the largest single-day protest in Washington, D.C.’s history, though official numbers are still coming in, according to USA Today. That doesn’t account for the hundreds of other protests in cities like Oxford and globally.
Hundreds of parents, residents, Ole Miss alumni and students flooded the Square Saturday morning to show their support of both the Oxford march and the high schoolers who made it happen.
“We’re not children anymore. We’re warriors.”
Anna Claire Franklin and Livvy Cohen are both 16-year-old juniors at Oxford High School. Franklin is on the debate team and likes to spend time with her friends. Cohen spends all her extra time working as editor-in-chief for her school’s newspaper.
But the girls said gun violence has stripped them of their childhood.
“We have to fight to prevent a completely preventable tragedy,” Franklin said. “And it’s ludicrous that we have to. So we’re not children anymore. We’re warriors.”
After the Parkland shooting, the girls said they spent time figuring out where they would hide to survive an active shooter attack.
“I remember sitting in the hallway with my lunch group formulating a plan for if an active shooter enters the school, which I shouldn’t have to be doing,” Franklin said.
She and Cohen both decided it was on them to do something about this issue locally. They got in touch with Moms Demand Action in Oxford, and the timing of the national March for Our Lives lined up well with the girls’ desire for action.
“March for Our Lives happened, and we realized that this is what we needed to be doing for our community,” Franklin said.
The girls said they were inspired by fellow high schoolers Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, survivors of the Parkland shooting who have recently garnered national attention after speaking out against gun violence around the country.
“After these students started creating such a voice for everyone, I felt really inclined to actually know what I was talking about rather than just fight for a change but not actually know what I was fighting for,” Cohen said. “These are 100 percent my opinions.”
Background checks and mental health databases
Ask the girls what they want changed, and they’ll rattle off a list that starts with open dialogues and gun-sense legislation.
For Oxford High School junior Cooper Thomason, mental health was the main focus of his speech. Thomason said he’d turned to local experts for information before giving his speech so he’d be better-equipped to speak on mass shootings and gun violence.
One of those experts was psychiatrist Tim Kelly.
“I learned that 98 percent of school shooters are white males age 18 to 25 and typically (have) a thought disorder,” Thomason said. “This is important because we can help these people.”
The complicated issue of mental health is a pillar of the gun debate. Thomason argued the current gun purchasing system doesn’t do much to keep firearms out of reach of those with mental illnesses.
“This is why Dr. Kelly also suggests the idea of putting these people in a database,” Thomason said. “What this does is it prevents people who might not be in the best situation of getting guns immediately after. And considering that the majority of school shooters all have these disorders, it’s frankly ridiculous that this has not already been implemented.”
Hope for future generations
Junior Edith Marie Green traveled to Oxford from the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science in Columbus. Green moved many audience members to tears as she painted a picture of her future as a history teacher.
“Hopefully, something changes so that when I’m a history teacher in the future, I can tell my students that regular mass shootings are a thing of my childhood and not of theirs,” Green said. “Hopefully, when I’m a teacher in the future, I don’t have to worry about standing in front of bullets for my students.”
The moms behind the march helped to give their own daughters hope, too.
Erica Jones and Stacey Smith of Moms Demand Action Oxford helped the high schoolers organize the march but say their involvement was minimal. They were the ones to obtain a permit and work with the city, but the rest was up to the students.
“They are not our puppets,” Jones said. “This was all them. We just stood back and watched in awe.”
But Smith, the mother to a 13-year-old daughter, said she’s embarrassed this burden has fallen no the children.
“We’ve let them down, and we should be ashamed of ourselves,” Smith said. “But I’m very proud of them … for really understanding that there is something beyond today.”
Jones said she is proud of these students, particularly for the example they’re setting for her 3-year-old daughter.
“I want her to know what a big difference kids can make, and anyone can make, if they put their minds to it,” Jones said. “We have a big book of superheroes, and we’ve been talking about heroes (Anna Claire Franklin and Livvy Cohen) because she she needs to know what a big difference people can make.”
Franklin and Cohen said they hope that people will be able to see past partisan issues and unite to bring safety to schools.
“We’re all affected by gun violence, and I hope that with movements like this, people start to realize that it’s an everybody issue,” Cohen said. “Everybody has to do something to make any sort of change.”
