Student survivors of last week’s deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” to talk about the tragedy and their fight to change gun laws.
Ellen welcomed 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez, 17-year-old Cameron Kasky and 17-year-old Jaclyn Corin from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to the sofa on Friday’s show. The high school senior and juniors opened up to Ellen about the nightmare experience and how they managed to survive.
“I didn’t even know it was a real thing until somebody outside of the school texted me 40 minutes later saying ‘Are you okay?'” said Gonzalez, who was in the school’s auditorium at the time of the shooting. “And I was like ‘oh gosh, this is it, the news, this is real.'”
Kasky and Corin talked about how they hid in one of the classrooms for over two hours until they finally escaped.
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The talk show host also asked Gonzalez about her emotional speech at the anti-gun rally and how she came up with the “We call BS” chant.
“I knew that I would get my job done properly at that rally if I got people chanting something,” Gonzalez explained. “And I thought, ‘We call BS has four syllables, that’s good, I’ll use that.”
The 18-year-old student said that she didn’t want to use the actual curse word because of the children watching, but also because she didn’t want the message to be thought of in a negative way. “This is the most important thing right now,” she added.
Later, Ellen praised Kasky for challenging Senator Marco Rubio during the CNN town hall discussion on Wednesday night.
“We appreciate that Senator Rubio turned up, because not everybody did,” Kasky said, “and we appreciate that he has started the baby steps to fixing this.” Kasky also mentioned how the topic of gun control is becoming more of a conversation and less of a debate.
Ellen asked the three survivors if they were concerned about the issue of gun control before last week’s attack which saw 17 people lose their lives. While the students were certainly aware of the problems, they admitted to not being as politically motivated as they are now.
“I wish I had been able to be part of this before I had to feel it at home,” Kasky confessed. “And I almost feel guilty that it took my community taking 17 bullets and it took us feeling that anguish for us to get involved, but we’re here now, and we just have to keep on going and realize that we’re here to fight the good fight.”
The students also spoke about the “March For Our Lives” gun-protest that will take place in Washington D.C. on March 24, but made it clear that their intentions are not to ban guns altogether, but to regulate semi-automatic weapons and gun accessories that allow semi-automatic rifles to be fired more rapidly.
Ellen encouraged the students to continue fighting and donated $50,000 to the movement, courtesy of Shutterfly.
