March For Our Lives co-founder and Parkland shooting survivor says U.S. is "at another turning point" after Uvalde and Buffalo
In 2018, Jaclyn Corin spent hours trapped in a classroom as a shooter roamed the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, before she was able to walk safely away. But 14 of her classmates and three staff members of the school would not make it out alive. Their deaths helped spark a new mission for Corin and several other of her classmates.
"After the shooting, I pretty much thrust myself into advocacy because I knew that if I was lucky enough to survive the shooting and some of my peers were not, I needed to do something productive with my fear," she told "CBS Mornings" on Friday. "And so I kind of spent the rest of my high school career, throwing away the rest of my childhood really, and doing this advocacy work."
The March For Our Lives movement was founded in 2018 and sparked a series of marches that brought people from across the world together—determined to put a stop to gun violence.
In the wake of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, the group will hold yet another series of marches this weekend. The largest will take place on Saturday in Washington, D.C., where thousands are expected to attend. Corin, now a student at Harvard, is among those who helped plan the event.
"I think this country is at another turning point, and I really think this is the time where we're going to see real, substantial change," she said. "So, I'm getting back out there."
The shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde brought back some traumatic memories for Corin and revived the question of how a teen with mental health issues can purchase such a deadly weapon and cause so much death and destruction.
"Well, I just knew that it was so reminiscent of what happened at my high school in Parkland in 2018. I mean, you had a teenager who should not have access to firearms getting to walk out of a gun store with a semiautomatic rifle and using that weapon to kill innocent children in the place that they're supposed to feel safest," Corin said.
Since Parkland, Corin said that she has seen changes in gun laws from the state level which have "saved thousands of lives collectively."
She said she would like to see more laws passed to protect students from becoming victims of another school shooting.
"You know, politically I've come to really understand the political barriers that exist in this country, which I didn't know back then. And I know it's tough to create change, but I know it's possible," Corin said.
