DENVER – Luna Rosenzweig was fed up. She was in an ocean of teenagers in Denver’s Civic Center Park Saturday afternoon, demanding an end to a sea of bloodshed on school campuses across the country.

“We deserve not to die in our schools,” the sign-toting sophomore from Denver’s East High School said near the stage at the city’s March for Our Lives event, which drew a crowd of what appeared to tens of thousands downtown. “It’s a big issue, and it needs to stop. As a teenager, I have a voice now, and I can vote soon. I’m going to help.”

People of all ages turned out to protest. They chanted slogans in what was clearly a political rally offering a pathway to peace, protesters said.

“Vote him out,” they chanted at the mention of Colorado Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner’s name. Gardner is a recipient of campaign cash from the National Rifle Association, which opposes most gun-control measures.

“No more silence, end gun violence,” the crowd that filled the park seemed to chant in unison, led by former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and his wife, former state Rep. Wilma Webb.

Tay Anderson, a teenager who ran unsuccessfully for the Denver Public Schools board last year, was one of the chief organizers of the Denver event among the all-teen Never Again Colorado, which includes members from all of the state’s congressional districts.

“We say enough is enough,” he told the crowd.

He spoke of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.

“This is about 20 years of consistently failed policy,” he said to applause. “It should have stopped after Columbine, but it didn’t.”

After scores of high-profile shootings – elevated to the national stage most prominently by Columbine – people mostly on the political left have pressed for tougher gun laws as a means to avert mass shootings and save lives.

The Denver march was part of a national day of reflection for the 17 students and faculty killed by 19-year-old gunman at a Florida high school on Feb. 14.

Across the country Saturday, teens gathered in the hundreds or thousands, supported by adults fearful and angry about gun violence, to ask politicians to rethink the availability of military-style weapons.

Tom Mauser, whose son, Daniel, was killed at Columbine, told the protesters Saturday he and his generation marched to protest fighting in Vietnam.

“This is your Vietnam,” he told young protesters. “Sadly, you have to march for peace in your own schools.”

Gatherings were also held in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Longmont and smaller venues across the state. Hundreds of thousands gathered in Washington, D.C.

Students were bused to the event from across the metro area, with transportation paid for with money raised by young political activists.

As part of a national demonstration on March 14, one month after the Parkland shooting, students from Denver schools marched to the state Capitol, where they were met by the governor and other supportive Democrats at a noontime rally.

“I was here then, I’m here today and I’m not going anywhere until our schools stop being war zones,” 70-year-old Cathy Jones of Aurora said Saturday, calling herself a former Republican. “I don’t know why it doesn’t break politicians’ hearts when they, and they alone, have the power to stop it.”

The NRA, along with supportive politicians and voters who hold the Second Amendment sacred, are staunch adversaries to many gun control proposals.

Colorado House Republican leader Patrick Neville of Castle Rock this year tried to pass a measure, as he does annually, to allow teachers and other school staff to carry concealed weapons to help defend themselves and students. Neville was a student at Columbine High School, when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 13 people and wounded 24.

His bill was defeated by the Democratic majority on a House committee last month. The next day, Neville met with President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss gun violence at schools.

Last Monday, Republicans on a state Senate committee voted down a ban on “bump stocks,” cheap devices that increase the firing speed of legal rifles. Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock used a dozen of the devices when he shot and killed 58 people and injured hundreds of others at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas last October.

“Government rarely can make a significant impact on these big issues,” state Sen. Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs, said before he voted against the bump-stock measure. “Law-abiding citizens are usually the ones who are impacted, and those who willfully disobey the law cannot be controlled by this.”

Hill is running for Congress this year to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs, also a gun-rights supporter. In the same hearing, a Hill-sponsored piece of legislation to repeal the 15-round limit on ammunition magazines in Colorado that Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate passed in 2013.

State Sen. Mike Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, sponsored the ban on bump stocks. He is not seeking re-election to the legislature this year.

“I am so proud of the young people, who are marching today,” he told Colorado Politics Saturday via text. “I think they have made a difference. Even President Trump agrees with my bump-stock bill now.”

Trump tweeted on Friday that his administration would move to ban the devices, blaming the Obama administration for allowing them.

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