Inspired by Hollywood movie , US anti-Second Amendment campaigners use billboards to demand gun reform
The placards ask Republican Senator Marco Rubio what he's going to do about gun control after the Florida school shooting. Photo: Twitter
US campaigners have taken inspiration from the 2017 film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to call for gun control in the wake of the latest school shooting which claimed 17 lives.
The placards were driven around Miami on Friday to put pressure on its Republican senator after the high school massacre this week in Florida.
The signs, reading “Slaughtered in school”, “And still no gun control?”, “How come, Marco Rubio?”, echoed the Oscar-nominated film where a mother challenges authorities over justice for her daughter who was raped and murdered.
The protest was organised by activist group Avaaz, which highlighted the campaign donations Rubio has accepted from gun advocates the National Rifle Association (NRA).
“The senator has taken fire across the country for his toothless response to the shooting, calling it ‘inexplicable’. We call that inexcusable,” Avaaz’s deputy director Emma Ruby-Sachs said.
“Florida has notoriously lax gun laws and Rubio, who is supported by the NRA, has never attempted to reform them. ”
“There have been 334 mass shootings in last 12 months, and yet no new federal gun laws since 1994,” she said.
The protest followed a similar one in London on Thursday which highlighted the “lack of progress” made since the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 71 people in June.
Frances McDormand plays a mother grieving the murder of her daughter in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Meanwhile, Rubio has criticised the FBI after it admitted failing to investigate a tip-off last month that the shooting suspect, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, had a “desire to kill” and had access to guns.
The teenager has been charged with killing 17 people in the shooting spree at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Wednesday.
Peers described Cruz as a troubled individual and said there had been warning signs, while police have not offered a motive but said he was previously expelled from the school.
The massacre has once again sparked a debate over availability of firearms in the US, with the country already having seen eight school shootings that have caused death or injury this year.
-AAP
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