Yoonie Yang was sitting in her Spanish two honors class in southern Florida when she first learned of a shooting at nearby Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. She watched in horror as fellow students checked in on their friends to see if they were among the 17 victims.
“I don’t think my peers know of an America or a world where there isn’t gun violence,” said Yang, now a senior at the University of Pennsylvania and a campus organizer for the gun safety group Students Demand Action. “This is an issue that we’re willing to take a stand on, and it’s an issue that has affected our lives and affected our childhoods into our adulthoods.”
Yang and fellow gun safety advocates are acutely aware of the stakes of this year’s elections, as Donald Trump looks to return to the White House. The US has some of the highest rates of gun violence in the world when compared to other developed countries. Joe Biden’s presidency oversaw the passage of the first major federal gun safety law in nearly 30 years and a boost for violence interruption community programs led by the people in the communities most affected by gun violence.
