Brunswick’s legislative delegation was among a crowd that gathered at the Town Mall Sunday afternoon for a rally demanding state lawmakers enact gun control legislation in the wake of the Lewiston mass shooting last month.

About 150 people attended the rally, which was organized by Bowdoin College sophomores Libby Riggs and Eva McKone. They advocated for an assault weapons ban, red flag laws, more comprehensive background checks and a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases.

“The night of the Lewiston mass shooting, I remember my roommates and I huddled on the couch, all of us feeling a sense of hopelessness,” Riggs said. “Our sense of normalcy broke.

“So many young people feel hopeless, feel like we’re locked in a trance.”

The pair demanded a meeting with Gov. Janet Mills to discuss potential gun control laws on behalf of students across the state.

“We must continue to take a stand and demand our legislators act,” Riggs said.

State Sen. Mattie Daughtry, a Brunswick Democrat who serves as assistant majority leader, and Brunswick Reps. Poppy Arford and Dan Ankeles, both Democrats, were among the crowd.

“We need change and we need change now,” Daughtry said. “It’s particularly heartbreaking to see how hard the murderer’s family and coworkers tried to prevent this. And what’s clear is that Maine’s laws failed.”

Authorities said Robert Card, 40, of Bowdoin, was found with two assault-style rifles after he shot and killed 18 people, including a Brunswick man, at a bar and a bowling alley Lewiston on Oct. 25. It was the deadliest shooting in Maine’s history. Some experts have said the shooting could have been averted if Maine had a red flag law that would have given law enforcement more authority to confiscate Card’s weapons based on previous threats he made.

“We need to see how we can not only strengthen Maine’s laws but change them,” Daughtry said.

“Nothing is going to change until we change it,” Arford said. “There’s nobody out there. There’s no magic wand. It’s us.”

Arford said lawmakers owe it to the shooting victims and their families to enact gun control legislation.

Ankeles, who has two young children, said he worries about potential gun violence in schools.

“I’m a parent who wants his children to come home safely on the school bus every time I send them off,” he said. “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing. We can’t keep treading water.”

Members of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, formed in 2000 in response to the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, attended the rally.

“Out of this tragedy comes some reason for hope, some opportunity for change,” said Cam Shannon, the coalition’s board chairperson. “Mainers who never focused on this issue before are waking up to the notion that we are not immune to gun violence. They are waking up to the notion that if we don’t implement basic, common-sense gun safety legislation, it will not be a question of if another mass shooting happens, but instead, when.”

The crowd honored Billy Brackett, a deaf man from Brunswick who was one of the 18 people killed, with a rendition of “Amazing Grace” led by Bowdoin College junior Molly Richardson who held up the American Sign Language sign for “I love you.”

The rally ended with attendees chanting, “Not one more!”

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