WATCH: March For Our Lives Releases PSA As 2020 Gun Debate Heats Up
The anti-gun violence group March For Our Lives released a public service announcement Monday featuring adults learning safety protocol in case of a shooting at work.
Their expert instructor is Kayleigh, a young student familiar with lock down drills.
The PSA comes as the gun control debate is gaining momentum in the 2020 presidential campaign and the U.S. is grappling with the latest mass shooting, this time in at a California synagogue, leaving one person dead and three others injured.
"If there was an active shooter, you would all be dead," Kayleigh says to the group of employees in the video, which some viewers may find disturbing.
The adults are standing in what appears to be a mailroom for a team-building exercise.
A spokesperson March For Our Lives told NPR the "instructor" in the video is an actual student, Kayleigh Webb Sanchez, and the video, shot in National City, Calif., was filmed during a training exercise and was not scripted.
The PSA comes on the heels of President Trump addressing the National Rifle Association at its annual convention and as NRA itself is facing renewed scrutiny and infighting.
Over the weekend, NRA president Oliver North decided against seeking a second term, plunging the organization into turmoil ahead of its board meeting. In recent days it has been the subject of several reports detailing alleged financial mismanagement top NRA officials.
On Friday, President Trump "unsigned" the United States from a United Nations arms treaty, which was aimed in part at ensuring human rights abusers could not get their hands on guns.
The March For Our Lives PSA, titled "Generation Lockdown," cuts between Kayleigh coaching the group on what to do in different shooting scenarios, and images of students carrying out those instructions.
Some of those images include desks and chairs stacked up against a door to serve as a barricade. Another show young people crouching in hiding places underneath tables.
The PSA ends with a song Kayleigh says her teacher taught her and her peers to help them remember what to do if a shooter entered their school:
"Lockdown, lockdown let's all hide Lock the doors and stay inside Crouch on down Don't Make a sound And don't cry or you'll be found"
Viewers are then urged to learn more about the universal background check bill before the Senate. A similar version passed the House in March.
The gun issue is also getting attention from candidates vying to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020.
California Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., last week at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire vowed to use executive action, if she were elected, to enact tougher gun laws if Congress failed to do so in the first 100 days of her administration.
At a campaign stop in Milwaukee this month, another Democratic hopeful, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker told a crowd that gun violence is a public health issues and one that is "deeply personal" to him.
"I am tired of seeing street-level shrines to children who have been murdered — candles and teddy bears," Booker said. "I'm tired of going to funeral after funeral when the most perverse, unnatural things happen where parents bury children."
March For Our Lives has become a potent voice in the debate about the role guns play in American society. The organization came about in the aftermath of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida where 17 students and faculty were killed. [Copyright 2019 NPR]
