EMMA GONZALEZ

My parents wouldn't let me shave it earlier, so I made a PowerPoint presentation to convince them. I strategically put pictures of bald women in there.

I am not a crisis actor.

Any time I had my hair in a ponytail, it would give me a headache by the end of the day.

I was born in 1999, just a few months after 13 people were left dead after a shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.

To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.

I'm an 18-year-old girl, at the end of the day. I'm a human person, and so are the people that I work with.

Many people in this world are not raised to understand the concept of consent, in all walks of life, and it's important that abusers of consent not be treated as victims when they are rightfully exposed.

In Florida, to buy a gun, you do not need a permit, you do not need a gun license, and once you buy it, you do not need to register it. You do not need a permit to carry a concealed rifle or shotgun. You can buy as many guns as you want at one time.

Teachers do not need to be armed with guns to protect their classes; they need to be armed with a solid education in order to teach their classes.

Crying is a kind of communication, and communication is awesome.

In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us. Fifteen were injured. And everyone - absolutely everyone - in the Douglas Community was forever altered.

What matters is that the majority of American people have become complacent in a senseless injustice that occurs all around them. What matters is that most American politicians have become more easily swayed by money than by the people who voted them into office.

The problem of gun violence goes beyond the countless demographic differences between people.

If you want to help arm the schools, arm them with school supplies, books, therapists - things they actually need and can make use of.

Mental illness and gun violence are not directly correlated, but when the two go hand in hand, Americans - often children - lose their lives.

We're not saying 'no guns.' We are saying we want to regulate semi-automatic weapons and the accessories that make them fully automatic because fully automatic weapons are banned.

I draw, paint, crochet, sew, embroider - anything productive I can do with my hands while watching Netflix.

Get out and vote. If you can't vote, then register other people to vote. Get people to the polls; make sure that people who need to vote can vote.

I feel like in my senior year of high school, I had my clothes a lot more figured out. I had my hair figured out.

The pro-gun propaganda peddled by the National Rifle Association feeds myths about gun ownership, and these myths arguably perpetuate the suffering of thousands of Americans each year.

That's the number one rule after you lose someone is go to somebody else, go to the people around you, be with the people that you love.

I think there's an incredible amount of people who know not only what we're feeling but know people who have lost their lives to gun violence.

We need to digitize gun-sales records, mandate universal background checks, close gun-show loopholes and straw-man purchases, ban high-capacity magazines, and push for a comprehensive assault weapons ban with an extensive buyback system.

If I'm able to communicate one thing to adults, it would be this: it should not be easier to purchase a gun than it is to obtain a driver's license, and military-grade weapons should not be accessible in civilian settings.

You don't drive a NASCAR on the street, no matter how fun it might be, just like you don't need an AR-15 to protect yourself when walking home at night. No one does.