Age: 16
From: Austin, Tex.
I’m not against gun ownership. I’m just against irresponsible gun ownership. I’m against uncontrolled gun ownership. I have two relatives right now who are at the convention. I believe that they know I’m here, but we definitely have different opinions on this matter.
The people in there don’t live our realities. They don’t know how scary it is for us going to school.
There was a kid who had one of the plastic water bottles, and if you screw the top on, you can twist it and pop it, and the kid did that, and the entire cafeteria went silent. And this is in the middle of a high school lunch, and teenagers are notorious for being very loud, so it’s not a small feat to make us grow quiet all at once. It’s terrifying. There was a kid who dropped a textbook in the middle of the hallway and we froze. That’s our reality and that’s how scared that we are.
Michael S. Rawlings
Mayor of Dallas
Age: 63
From: Dallas
Right now this city is a little sore, because we just lost another police officer. We buried him on Tuesday. A gun killed him and almost his partner — she’s sitting in Presbyterian with major head wounds in critical condition, which reminds us back to July 7. We’re a little raw right now and anything that has to do with guns is a very sensitive issue for us.
We wanted to host an event. We reserved the venue to have a reasonable, levelheaded discussion about guns — why the Second Amendment is important, what does reasonable gun reform look like — and listen to all sides. And I couldn’t get the N.R.A. to participate and I couldn’t get Michael Bloomberg to participate in
