#the text after the lone dash is the speech that aj put in the comments of this post

[alyandajsource]

iamaj: Throwing it back to this incredibly important moment. Speaking at the @marchforourlives event in NY last month 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Please read the comments for full transcript of Aly and I’s speech 🧡

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Aly- In the early hours of April 3rd, just after playing our first show of a 35 city tour, AJ & I and our band and crew survived a mass shooting. More than 100 rounds of bullets were fired off around us as we lay at the floor of our tourbus trembling, at 2am. I’ll never forget asking our drummer to call my husband Stephen, as my heart raced & my hands shook, knowing he wasn’t on the bus, but was still at the hotel across the street. Later that evening we found out the death count. 6 people gone. Laying on sidewalks just outside the venue we played only hours before. A couple days later in Portland, we pulled up to our venue only to find out someone had been shot outside earlier that morning. And then while driving in an Uber around Atlanta on a day off, we heard gunshots being fired off in the distance. Our driver shrugged her shoulders at the sound. This should not be normal, this should not be something we “prepare” ourselves for as citizens when we walk out into the world.

AJ-When 9/11 happened security protocols at airports forever changed. Why is gun violence  not treated the same way. We need to focus on raising the minimum age to buy a firearm, not allowing same day purchases, closing loopholes in state and federal background check laws, enabling more robust red flag laws, considering buybacks as instituted in countries with historically significant gun cultures, such as the UK and New Zealand, and banning semi automatic weapons once & for all. I’m tired of the argument that these types of guns are used for recreation, self defense or for hunting. They are used to kill & destroy a target upon contact. They are weapons of war. Aly & I actually grew up shooting. Our parents even owned guns. We know well about gun safety, how they should be properly stored & safety protocols at shooting ranges. But after the string of deaths that continue to flood our news, I never want to step foot on a shooting range again. I never want to shoot a gun “for fun” again. There is nothing fun about guns when you know the damage they can do. Yes you can be a responsible gun owner but this line of argument misses the obvious problem in front of us. We’ve personally seen the violence when guns are easily and readily available. The certainty of something terrible happening, repeatedly, again and again, until we do something about it, must guide our thinking. And it’s our responsibility as forward thinking citizens to step in & change the system.

Aly-We aren't just talking about mass shootings being the problem. We’re also talking about a child that finds a gun unlocked and accidentally kills their sibling, we’re talking about someone who’s in a mental health crisis and decides to end their life with a gun, we’re talking about violence, we’re talking about many different scenarios where a gun completely shatters the life of the person lost and their loved ones that are left with the after math.

AJ-After Uvalde happened Aly & I knew we had to do something beyond just donating to go fund me. We had to do something more  then sending prayers inside our bunk beds on the bus late at night. More than posting hashtags on social media. We decided to share our story so it might change your view on guns. So that you can challenge your local government to do something. And if they won’t do something, we encourage you to vote them out these mid terms. They might be beholden to the gun lobby, but if we join together we can push the politicians out and elect people who will do something. We can show them with our votes that we have had enough.

Aly- I want to leave you with one more thought while we still have your attention. The other night I was standing on a street corner  waiting at a burger stand & realized I was actually terrified of being gunned down while my back was turned making my order. This is a sad truth, a new reality I’m faced with, and I can only imagine the trauma others survivors face, with severely paralyzing moments they encounter daily. Amazingly, we have brave teenagers to thank for creating March for Our Lives, who are trying to shift the national consciousness. We have TEENS to thank for creating change that adults were unwilling to make. Just sit with that, it took people under the age of 21 to organize this event. That’s where we’re at. That’s the level of desperation. But it also means we have hope for the future. That no one else has to live through this.