Photos: Gun Safety Protest

Roughly thirty people gathered on Saturday, April 8, 2023 to march for gun safety and for an end to gun violence on the Pentacrest in Iowa city, Iowa.

University of Iowa sophomore Melissa Alvarez kicked off the march with a speech that honored and recognized victims of gun violence.

When asked for comment on the ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ narrative, Alvarez said, “Obviously if it worked, we would’ve seen it working by now.”

Cedar Rapids native Dean Wicklund attended the march. He spoke about his daughter who was a teacher in Colorado at one of the K-8 schools that fed into Columbine High School during the horrific shooting that took place there in April of 1999, in which fifteen people were killed. Wicklund recalls the phone call with his daughter after the Columbine massacre: “I didn’t know what to say to her, she didn’t know what to say to me. We just long-distance-listened to each other breathe for ten minutes.”

Twenty-four years later, he still worries for his grandchildren’s safety at school: “My grandkids went to school out there [in Colorado] and had a shooting,” he says in reference to the school shooting that happened at Arapahoe High School in 2013 in which two people were killed.

The march concluded after about forty minutes.

Gallery • 18 Photos

Avi Lapchick

Cedar Rapids native Dean Wicklund is seen writing "Enough is Enough" with chalk on the Pentacrest in Iowa City, Iowa during the march for gun safety on Saturday, April 8, 2023. Wicklund spoke about his daughter who was a teacher at one of the K-8 schools that fed into Columbine high School during the horrific shooting that took place there in April of 1999, in which fifteen people were killed. Wicklund recalls the phone call with his daughter after the Columbine massacre: "I didn't know what to her, she didn't know what to say to me. We just long-distance-listened to each other breathe for ten minutes."