Students from Parkland, Fla., high school head to state capital to push for gun control

About 100 students who survived the deadly mass shooting last week at a Florida high school are busing 400 miles to the state's capital to urge lawmakers to act to prevent a repeat of the massacre.

NBC 6 South Florida reports that students who survived the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland are going to Tallahassee and plan to hold a rally Wednesday in hopes that it will put pressure on the state's Republican-controlled Legislature to consider a package of gun-control laws.

Shortly after the shooting that killed 17 people, several legislative leaders were taken on a tour of the school to see the damage first hand and they appeared shaken afterward.

"Not that we want to take people's gun's away, but we want to protect ourselves from the violent weapons of mass destruction that are not necessary in civilian life,” says Emma Gonzalez, a senior at the school who made an impassioned speech this weekend at a Fort Lauderdale rally that went viral.

"We are going to make sure that this doesn't happen,” Gonzalez says. “We are going to be the people who decide this change. It's not going to be anybody else. It's not going to be people further down the line, it's going to be us."

Gonzalez and the others who escaped the attack at the high school want tougher background checks. They want state laws that would stop someone like 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz from legally buying an automatic rifle. Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of murder in the Parkland attack.

Other classmates agree the time is now for action on gun control.

"I really think they are going to hear us out," says Chris Grady, a 19-year-old senior.

While those students are traveling, others are making their voices heard with protests Tuesday at schools elsewhere in Broward County, Fla. Students and staff at a high school in Boca Raton staged a mass walkout and walked 11 miles to Douglas High School.

Students also have vowed to exert pressure on Congress as the aftermath of the rampage resonates beyond Florida and from coast to coast.