HOW MANY WILL IT TAKE?
Since our first silent shoes protest in 1994 at the US Capital
750,000 American civilians have lost their lives to guns.
Silent March: Protesting Gun Violence (est. 1994)
Silent March is a nonprofit organization that uses empty shoes, many belonging to victims of gun violence, to graphically illustrate America's preventable epidemic of firearm-related death, injury and trauma.
Silent March is not just a memorial.
It is a call to action demanding that our government act swiftly, intelligently and boldly on this issue, in the interest of saving lives.
Our campaign was launched in the 1990's when the gun death toll in America was 40,000 a year. Today it is 30,000 a year.
Today, many people are using the potent visual image of shoes to represent the individuality of every person killed by firearm, whether through suicide, homicide or accident.
Left: In the aftermath of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, Silent March and local activists created a shoes protest on the steps of the statehouse. At that time, many Americans believed, and hoped, that the nation had reached a "tipping point" and would enact sensible gun violence prevention.
Below: The 1994 Silent March at Congress, displaying 40,000 pairs of shoes representing one year's toll of gun violence.