'Books Not Bullets' rally held in Gainesville

Published: Apr. 10, 2019 at 11:33 PM EDT
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Dozens of people attended the "Books Not Bullets" rally in Downtown Gainesville Wednesday evening to let the community know that they are against Senate Bill 7030.

"I think it's just too risky," Students Demand Action group leader Jovanna Liuzzo said. "Why would we want to put our children, our teachers, our staff at our schools at risk? It's just not worth it.

Senate Bill 7030 is a bill that requires a sheriff to establish a school guardian program and there have been meetings at the state capitol in expanding it to include arming teachers.

"I feel like every week I see one article telling me that a gun misfired in a Oklahoma classroom or a Kansas classroom," Liuzzo said. "It just isn't proven effective."

There was one protestor who was for Senate Bill 7030.

"Teachers should be armed because parkland would've been stopped if with an armed teacher," Caiden Serfozo said. "If we armed teachers and other staff or certain staff, it will be protected, the school will be protected."

He also believes that people should focus more on teachers pay instead of focusing on arming them or not.

"We should be unifying for teacher's pay instead of worrying about these little things like if these teachers are going to have guns or not," Serfozo said.

The rally ended with statements from District 1 school board member Tina Certain and District 1 city commissioner Gigi Simmons.

The organization plans on sending signed petitions and postcards to senator keith perry's office about their concerns with the bill.