Activists Disappointed By Pitifully Low Turnout Numbers at Pro-Gun Marches

Aww. Pro-gun activists hoping to counter February’s wildly successful March for Our Lives with their own country-wide demonstrations suffered disappointingly low turnout numbers. Sad!

Saturday’s March 4 Our Rights, composed primarily of students, was smaller than expected in places like Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, the Washington Post reports, despite organizing efforts kicking off way back in April. In Chicago, organizers anticipated around 125 people—not an especially ambitious expectation, considering the city is home to more than 2.7 million. Instead, only around 35 showed up, posting up in a corner of Millennium Park. (Because organizers failed to get a permit, security ordered them off the Great Lawn.)

That protest was dwarfed significantly by hundreds of activists who shut down nearly ten blocks of the very busy Dan Ryan Expressway in protest of gun violence in their city, which has finally begun to drop after reaching a 20-year high in 2016.

“We came out here to do one thing: to shut it down,” the Rev. Michael Pfleger told the paper. “We came here to get their attention. Hopefully we got their attention. …Today was the attention-getter, but now comes the action.”

Meanwhile in Palm Beach, around 100 people were expected to rally in defense of the Second Amendment, but only 13 came. Of those, one was an organizer, three were speakers and two were…parents of the speakers. As Johnson told the Post: “The goal is to be just as successful as March for Our Lives. We want to outdo them.”

She added that she was disappointed by the turnout, saying she wasn’t sure why more people didn’t show up:

“‘I think a lot of conservatives are just afraid to show up for public events,’ she said through tears.”

That must be it!

D.C.’s numbers amounted to “a few dozen high schoolers, college students and recent graduates.” Surprisingly, Los Angeles managed the largest crowd, drawing around 50 participants. (Los Angeles is home to nearly 4 million people.)

Organizer Xena Amirani attributed the low numbers to a lack of funding, noting that March for Our Lives had been backed by millions in donations, whereas March 4 Our Rights cost $3,800 nationwide. Interestingly, the NRA managed to spend $11,438,118 support Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, and another $19,756,346 to opposing Hillary Clinton. Hmm.