Student survivors of a mass shooting at a Florida high school are in Mississippi to talk about gun violence prevention.
Alex Wind doesn't like to talk about what happened February 14th. That's the day Nikolas Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and killed 17 people with a semi automatic rifle. The 17-year old senior is putting his energy into traveling across the south with 18 classmates to raise awareness about gun violence. They call the project "March For Our Lives Road to Change."
"We're trying to just change the conversation. We feel that one of the reasons that people may not agree with us is just misinformation. A lot of people think that we're an anti- Second Amendment group when at the end of the day we're an anti-gun violence group. We want to save lives. We don't want to take away guns," said Wind.
Mississippi students joined the students for a rally and town hall meeting in Jackson. The Florida students' objectives include universal comprehensive background checks, a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles and funds to research the gun violence epidemic in America. According to the Jackson Police Department, there have been 57 gun-related deaths so far this year. Clay Morris, a senior at St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Jackson.
"Mass shootings are only 1 percent of all gun-related deaths that America has, so when we see the communities not being able to access help or not being able to stop things like gun violence. It effects them other ways like how kids are performing in school, how the school system is as a whole, how families are broken apart," said Morris.
Eighteen year old Olivia Bailey, a high school student at Madison Central High School is here with Moms Demand Action to speak out against gun violence.
"I know that in my community even though gun violence isn't as prevalent. I know that it can happen," said Bailey.
The Parkland, Florida students head to Louisiana next.
