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A vigil was held Friday in Maryland in front of the Montgomery County courthouse to remember the victims killed in the school shooting in Texas and those who died in the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York.
Some 60 people showed up wearing orange, the color of gun violence awareness, and demanding meaningful gun legislation passed in Congress.
Rockville Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton organized the vigil. “I am tired of thoughts and prayers; we are all so tired of thoughts and prayers.”
Montgomery County Executive Mark Elrich also spoke, recalling a conversation he had this week with a high school student who told Elirch that he just expects there to be shootings at school.
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“This is not acceptable. This is not something we can come to accept, it’s not something we can come to be numb to,” Elrich said.
Montgomery County Council Chair Gabe Albornoz led the crowd in a breathing exercise to try and help people cope and focus on the opportunity to do something to stop these kind of shootings.
“This is not the world I want my kids to grow up in,” Albornoz said.
Rev. Barry Moultrie, of Mount Calvary Baptist Church, offered a prayer, and said, “Our problem is we don’t love each other enough. It’s really, really simple.”
Council member Andrew Friedson said Americans do need to make a choice “of whether or not we value our children more than we value our guns.”
Twenty-one people, including 19 children, were killed Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. It was the second-deadliest school shooting in the U.S., following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.