Emma Gonzalez

Insecurities are debilitating a lot of times.

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.

As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.

Trees face many difficulties, what with deforestation and pollution, but that didn't stop me from wanting to be one - to just stop feeling and live.

I shaved my head a week or two before senior year. People used to ask me why, and the main reason is that having hair felt terrible.

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

You might not be a big fan of politics, but you can still participate. All you need to do is vote for people you believe will work on these issues, and if they don't work the way they should, then it is your responsibility to call them, organize a town hall, and demand that they show up - hold them accountable.

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.

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

I am not a crisis actor.

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.

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.

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.

I'm a mess, and I'm messy. I'm very, very bad at organizing myself.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If I wear a hat and sunglasses, not as many people recognize me.

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.

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.