WATCH: Emma Gonzalez names the murdered Parkland victims and observes several minutes of silence in a 6-minute, 20-second speech that covered the same time it took the gunman to kill 17 people in her high school:
“Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.” pic.twitter.com/OrTfuTdSNn
— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 24, 2018
Emma Gonzalez has become an increasingly familiar face in the push for gun control following the school shooting tragedy in Parkland, Florida that took the lives of 17 people last month. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school student and Never Again MSD co-founder was among the speakers at Washington D.C.s March For Our Lives event. Her speech and unflinching period of silence in memory of her dead fellow students stirred emotions in the nation’s capital and beyond.
“Six minutes and about twenty seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone, was forever altered,” stated Gonzalez. “Everyone who was there understands, everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands.”
“No one could believe that there were bodies in that building waiting to be identified for over a day. No one knew that the people who were missing had stopped breathing long before any of us had even known that a code red had been called.”
Gonzalez stood onstage for six minutes and twenty seconds delivering her speech, providing emphasis to the cold hard details associated with the mass shooting. A timer went off during the speech driving home the young activist’s point.
“Since the time that I came out here, it has been 6 minutes and 20 seconds,” she explained. “The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as the escape and walk free for an hour before arrest.”
As is her style, Gonzalez did not mince words as her speech came to a close.
“Fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”
You can (and should) watch the entire speech courtesy of NBC’s video coverage located above.