28 February 2018, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
This movement, this movement created by students, led by students is based in emotion. It is based in passion and it is based in pain...
The only reason that we’ve gotten so far is because we are not afraid of losing money. We are not afraid of getting re-elected or not getting re-elected. We have nothing to lose. The only thing we have to gain at this point is our safety…
I am not a “crisis actor”—I am not going of these pre-written speeches given to me by another person...
We are not here to be patted on the back. We are not here to be told we are doing so much because we know what we’re doing and we’re doing it for a reason. We’re doing it so our legislators, so that our lawmakers will make a change, so that they will take us seriously, so that they will not dismiss us any longer, so they won’t reschedule, so they won’t push us in another room as they dance around our questions. Because we came here prepared and we’re going to come to every single meeting with every single legislator—prepared. We know what we want. We want gun reform. We want common sense gun laws. We want stronger mental health checks and background checks to work in conjunction. We want a better age limit. We want privatized selling to be completely reformed so that you can’t just walk into a building with $130 and work out with an AR-15...
We want change and we know how to get that change...We’re going to keep moving forward because we don’t have a choice.
The people in office have failed us and if they continue to fail us, then they will no longer be in office because we will soon be given the ability to vote—and we will vote them out. And the people around us will vote them out. They must do right by us or they will lose their jobs. And we have brought that up to them time and time again...
We’ve had enough of ‘thoughts and prayers.’ We’ve had enough of ‘We’re in your consideration, we’re going think about it, and we’re going to tell you how we feel because we support you so much.’ Because we know that is not true. Because if you supported us, you would have made a change long ago and you would be making changes now...
So this is to every lawmaker out there. No longer can you take money from the NRA. No longer can you fly under the radar doing whatever it is that you want to do. Because we are coming after you. We are coming after every single one of you and we are demanding that you take action and demanding that you make a change. Thank you.