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New Orleans-area students, their teachers, parents and others calling for stronger gun control measures and an end to gun violence rallied through downtown New Orleans March 24, joining a national March for Our Lives movement organized in the wake of the killings of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Hundreds of people spanning at least eight blocks marched from the Marigny through the French Quarter, past Jackson Square and into the CBD, then ending with a rally where students and elected officials called on legislators to adopt a platform promoting stronger gun control measures.

The movement is calling for universal background checks, a ban or age restrictions on so-called assault weapons, the repeal of the National Rifle Association-backed Dickey Amendment preventing the Centers for Disease Control from work that promotes gun control, and an end to the NRA and other lobbying groups' influence in politics.

The banner of "Enough" has waved throughout the last several weeks leading up to the march, following February's Parkland murders*and more than 130 deaths in schools since the 2012 killings of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.

"Until today I have been silenced,"*said Olivia Keefe, a 17-year-old Benjamin Franklin High School student and co-organizer of the New Orleans march.?