March for Our Lives Highlights: Students Protesting Guns Say “Enough Is Enough”

“I think it is important not just to call for changes to our gun laws, not just to debate the subtleties of the Second Amendment, but to remember that it is people who have died because of our gun laws,” said Linda Gould, an American in Japan who organized the vigil.

And in Nagoya, Japan, Mieko Hattori, the mother of Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange student who was shot and killed in Baton Rouge, La., in the early 1990s, said earlier in the week, “I just wanted to convey our message: We support you from Japan.”

In Rome on Saturday, demonstrators at the American Embassy chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, the N.R.A. has got to go” and waved signs that read, “A Gun Is Not Fun” and “Am I Next?” The speakers at the rally included local students as well as Valentina and Gabriela Zuniga, a freshman and junior at Stoneman Douglas, who were on spring break.

“We knew there were rallies all over the world, and we looked for one in Rome,” said Gabriela, 16, adding that her life had changed drastically since the shooting. “You go into class and see empty desks. It’s different for everyone now.”

Near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, 150 to 200 people, most of them Americans, held signs saying “bullets aren’t school supplies” and “Waffeln statt Waffen” (Waffles Instead of Weapons).

Dylan von Felbert, 16, an 11th grader at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin, said, “Our generation can be very apathetic — myself included — so I think it’s important to support those things you really believe in.”

In Madrid, a small crowd — almost all of them Americans — braved a cold Saturday to gather in front of the American embassy. An American student read out a list of all the American school shootings since the Columbine massacre.