A group of young Colorado activists advocating for improved gun-control measures and a 19-year-old counterprotester with a Second Amendment advocacy group found common ground during an engaging conversation after Denver’s March on the NRA on Saturday afternoon.
During the protest, which happened despite violent threats that caused some students to pull out of the march they organized, Students Demand Action member Tay Anderson urged attendees standing beneath the steps of the Capitol building to speak with those they disagree with on gun-control rather than just preaching to the choir.
A crowd of counterprotesters with Rally for our Rights stood at the bottom of a hill beneath the Capitol, so several young activists who organized the anti-NRA march headed down to speak with them when their rally was finished.
Counterprotester Haley Marcantonio appreciated the dialogue and discovered that she and the young people she was standing in opposition with actually agreed on several fronts.
“Everyone expects it to be a screaming match between us, but it wasn’t like that at all,” Marcantonio said. “I thought it was really great, and we were just talking like friends.”
Marcantonio, who graduated from Roosevelt High School in Johnstown, said her school was closed three times her senior year over bomb threats and that she received threats of gun violence as a student.
“That’s why I definitely understand where these students are coming from,” Marcantonio said, talking about the young people who organized the NRA protest.
The teen said she believes in making sure people who shouldn’t have guns don’t. But she also said those who go through the proper process and training to own guns should be allowed to protect themselves.
Lesley Hollywood, Marcantonio’s mom and founder of Rally for our Rights, said she and the students her group were protesting believe safety is paramount. The students, she said, simply believe safety should be achieved with fewer guns, whereas Hollywood said she feels safer knowing guns are around for protection.
Mikaela Lawrence, a Columbine High School senior and member of the gun-control advocacy group Students Demand Action, walked around to speak with several of the counterprotesters.
“It’s important because we just found out Lesley Hollywood and I have a lot in common,” Lawrence said. “And many people in that group thought we were here talking about how we want to ban all guns, and we told them that’s not what we want to do. We want to make sure dialogue is open so we can talk and make change.”
The rally featured Coloradans who have lost family members to gun violence speaking out against the NRA’s intersection with politics. Speakers also included students invested in common-sense gun-control laws advocating for improved legislation. Specifically, speakers addressed adopting a “red flag” law that would allow guns to be confiscated from the severely mentally ill and banning assault weapons.
“If you shoot and kill me, know that I’m a seed, and I will go into the ground and grow, and this issue will live forever,” said the Rev. Timothy Tyler, pastor of Shorter Community African Methodist Episcopal Church in Denver. “We pledge to our children we will follow you and take up this fight.”