Thousands – including a Buffalo contingent – gather for gun safety rally in D.C.

"We're just here to say: Enough is enough," said Garnell Whitfield Jr., whose mother, Ruth Whitfield, was gunned down while grocery shopping after visiting her husband in a nursing home.

"If not now, when will enough be enough?" echoed his brother, Raymond Whitfield.

"As long as these gun laws don't change, that is not justice," the Rev. Denise Walden-Glenn, executive servant leader at VOICE Buffalo, told the crowd. "As long as we don't do something to address the anti-blackness and the white supremacy in our communities, we don't have justice. So we are here to demand justice and we are here to demand it right now."

That frustrated, even angry tone carried over from speaker to speaker at Saturday's "March for Our Lives." Like the 2018 event of the same name – and hundreds of other, smaller marches held across the country on Saturday – protesters gathered to call for stricter measures aimed at ending America's epidemic of mass shootings.

But while the 2018 march in D.C. was a hopeful affair that drew 200,000 people, the Associated Press estimated that on Saturday, about 30,000 gathered for the rally under gloomy skies on the National Mall.

There, the Whitfield brothers told the crowd that it is time for government to act.

"We're here to stand with those who are bold enough to demand sensible gun legislation that will help to reduce the gun violence in our communities, that will stop the slaughter of our most precious commodity: people, human beings, sisters, brothers, fathers, grandparents, friends – and in my case, my 86-year-old mother," Garnell Whitfield said.

Meanwhile, Raymond Whitfield paid tribute not only to the lives lost in Buffalo, but also those lost in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman 10 days later slaughtered 19 fourth-graders and two teachers.

"When will we as Americans no longer stand tacitly by, bearing witness to hollow-point bullets searing from the barrel of an AK-47 tearing through the flesh and bone of the American dream, mowing down its future in a Texas school massacre?" he asked.

Both Whitfield brothers also stressed a point that Walden-Glenn hammered home in a seven-minute, rousing speech that led off the rally.

"We have been working tirelessly to figure out long-term sustainable solutions to address the gun violence, but not just the gun violence, but the other issues that plague Black and brown communities across the nation – like not having the resources to meet our most basic needs," she said.

Several other rally attendees from Buffalo – who traveled down on a bus excursion organized by VOICE Buffalo – stood behind the Buffalo speakers as they spoke.

"With the shooting that happened at Tops on Jefferson, this is something we needed to be a part of," said Alia Williams, an organizer for the group. "I felt like the Buffalo story needed to stay in the news cycle, and I feel that the conversation about gun violence – and addressing how we're going to deal with the uptick in gun violence and white supremacy – are important."

Soe Phyo, another one of the march attendees from Buffalo, said it is ridiculous that 18-year-olds can buy assault rifles in many states, and in some cases, without background checks.

"After the incident on the 14th, I think something really shifted – and not only in the Buffalo area, but also on a national level," she said. "This epidemic of gun violence is I feel like the worst I've ever seen in my short life of 19 years ... I came here because I want to be with the people to really send a message that something has to be done: that this is not a shooting like any other and not something that we can gloss over."

It's certainly nothing that Myles Morrison, 22, can gloss over. He lost his father, Margus D. Morrison, in the Tops shooting. And ever since, he's been asking himself a question: "How did that boy get that gun?"

Thinking he got that gun because America's gun laws are too loose, Morrison said: "I came here to protest, and to tell the truth."