The Rev. Al Sharpton is spearheading the march on August 27 in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the 53rd anniversary of the historic March on Washington that was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph and others. The organizers will press legislators to ban assault rifles and to implement additional measures for background checks on those purchasing firearms.
The issue will certainly become a major issue in this year’s presidential election, particularly in light of the spate of mass shootings in San Bernardino, Charleston, and Newton, Connecticut.
“For us not to be able to respond to gun legislation is atrocious,” says Sharpton, who has pledged to bring together the civil rights, immigrant, LGBTQ, and Muslim communities as a unified front to take on this issue. “The face of civil rights today is multiracial, and we have to deal with the issue of gun violence,” says Sharpton.
As plans for a national march and rally move forward, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives instituted a sit-in on the floor of the Capitol last week and urged Republicans to move swiftly to enact sweeping legislation.
“Sometimes you have to violate a rule, a law, to uphold a greater law, a moral law,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) who led the planned sit-ins. “We have a right to sit down or sit in to engage in nonviolent protest. It is always right to do right.”
Legislation proposed last week by both Republicans and Democrats, including a bill sponsored by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would allow the U.S. Attorney General to deny a gun sale to anyone if there is a “reasonable belief”—a lesser standard than “probable cause”—that the buyer was likely to engage in terrorism, was killed on the Senate floor.
